Nostalgia
by flintyminty25
Summary: After a mission gone wrong, Sakura and Naruto find themselves struggling to save their beloved sensei. But how can they protect him when it's all inside his mind? Kakashi spirals into a twisted reality and his two students fight to keep him anchored.
1. Chapter 1

Kakashi strolled lazily through the heavy doors into the Hokage's office, nodding once to Naruto and Sakura as he passed them.

That is, he _would have_ bestowed upon them the pleasure of being on the receiving end of one of his gratifying nods-_if_ Sakura hadn't smacked him in the back of the head sharply when he walked past.

_Since when has our relationship been so touchy feely?_

Kakashi wisely swallowed his words, he knew when. _Since I handed over my impressionable student to be trained by a temperamental, impulsive woman whose preferred method of communication is done with her fists._

He paused mid-slouch and raised an eyebrow at her, opting for a haughty, condescending tilt of the head to express his annoyance.

"You're early!"

_There is a surprising deficit of thankfulness in that statement..._

She crossed her arms and glared at him as if he had just tracked mud in on the nice carpet. Kakashi looked behind him and was fairly surprised to see that he had.

"You think that the Hokage is the only one who deserves to be treated with respect?" Sakura demanded. Her green eyes narrowed, incredulous.

Kakashi felt that it would be in his best interest not to answer.

Naruto perked up at the sound of Sakura's interrogative cry, his perch on the windowsill unconsciously slipping into a hunter's crouch. Like a shark enthused at the scent of fresh blood, Naruto sped over to the crime scene, his blue eyes glinting with predatory intent.

_He's never been one to miss out on the opportunity to publicly harass his poor sensei. _Kakashi mentally sighed.

Suddenly he became aware of an inferno of killing intent blazing within the room. Kakashi reflexively looked to Tsunade. Just as he suspected, she was leering at him with an expectant expression, her amber eyes glinting dangerously beneath long lashes.

_So it's come to this then... _Kakashi braced himself.

"Yeah, Kaka-sensei! You really think that you only need to show respect to the Hokage, and no one else?" Naruto leapt up passionately and jabbed his pointer finger at him, "That the Hokage-"

"Yes."

Tsunade smirked in satisfaction and went back to her paperwork. Kakashi visibly slumped with relief. _That could have ended very, very badly..._

As Sakura rolled her eyes and Naruto muttered something sourly under his breath, Kakashi allowed himself a small smile of genuine fondness. Despite the fact that the two of them had just tried to get him slaughtered by a ridiculously powerful woman with an explosive temper and a quirky fetish for bean buns-he still loved them.

He cared more for those two than he did for anyone else still performing the basic bodily functions necessary to sustain life. And for Kakashi, that was saying a lot.

Now the only thing missing from the happy picture was Sasuke.

Kakashi imagined how, if the Uchiha were in the cramped office with them, he would cross his arms and huff in annoyance. _Or rather_, Kakashi mused drily, _try to kill us all..._

It really was too bad that Sasuke had decided that selling his body to a creepy, old snake man and plotting to murder his brother was a better use of his time than humoring his former sensei with timely, expressive exhalations. Maybe Kakashi should take advantage of the new replacement on his team and forget about Sasuke.

He could teach Sai the art of sarcasm. The jounin considered this briefly before deciding that the result would end up as socially disturbed as Gai's spirit of youth had. Desiring to cut that train of thought off _right there,_ Kakashi whipped out his Icha Icha. He _was _early after all.

Still feeling a little ruffled at how close he had come to getting whipped by his sadistic boss in front of his former students, Kakashi immersed himself into the familiar scenes and subplots. The Copy-ninja read Icha Icha for many different reasons, and one of them was comfort. He flipped to a page at random and was immediately soothed by the stereotypical characters and predictable interactions.

Other people had close friends and dependable family members to reassure and comfort them, Kakashi had an assortment of lecherous romance novels.

A few minutes later and he was so absorbed that he unconsciously leaned his seat against the Hokage's desk. A swift, stinging smack to the rump later and he decided that he would much rather occupy a space where there was not an irritable woman filing paperwork with her chakra-strengthened hands. _Ow... _

Soon the rest of the jounin she had summoned began to file into the cramped office. Ino, Chouji, and Shikamaru all came in together, Ino reprimanding the two boys for something they didn't appear to have any concern over.

_There should be some type of mathematical equation to determine the percent correlation between the number of kunoichi in the room and the probability of Hatake Kakashi getting physically assaulted._ Kakashi warily slunk into a corner, feeling a keen reluctance to expose his backside to the capricious females. Who knew when they would attack next?

Tenzou and Sai blew in at a brisk, professional pace that reminded him of the old ladies that power-walked around his street every morning. Kakashi snapped his book shut. The image of Tenzou and Sai wearing fanny-pacs and visors overtop of grimly determined expressions tainted the erotic passage before him. _Sometimes I wish I didn't have such a graphic imagination..._

"Good. Now that everyone is here, let's get started."

Tsunade stood up purposefully behind her desk and fixed them all with a level stare, "Within the last few weeks we have gotten multiple complaints from the the settlements along our border with Grass Country. As some of you know, there have been reports of a band of nomadic rogue nin from the Sand for the last couple of months. We haven't really considered them a threat until now, their sphere of influence didn't demand our immediate attention. Anyway, they have found a thriving market in Rock's growing underground drug cartel.

'These rogue nin specialize in poisons, the likes of which our scientists have never encountered." She paused, her honey-brown eyes grave, "Some of the underground mob leaders and their lackeys have been lacing all of their weapons with these unknown poisons. At first they stayed within Rock Country, but lately their attention has been directed towards some of the outer villages in Fire Country. Apparently the ability to demolish all opposition with a single blow has heightened their confidence."

She rolled her eyes, "Needless to say, these thugs don't have the skill to take on shinobi. We have genin teams taking care of the drug cartel. I've called you here today so that we can eradicate the source of the problem." She began to hand out mission scrolls, "There will be two teams. Team one will infiltrate the rogue ninja camp under the guise that you are rogue ninja and want to buy some of their poison. Your job is to gain their trust and to kill their leader. Team two will provide surveillance, any changes in strategy, and backup if necessary."

Tsunade turned to look pointedly at Kakashi, "Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, and Sai. You will be Team one." She turned her gaze to Tenzou, who nodded, "Yamato. You, Chouji, Shikamaru, and Ino will make up Team two." She smirked, resting her fist on her hip, "Everyone understand what they're doing and why? Yes? Good." Everyone nodded and voiced their understanding anyway.

The blonde turned away from them, waving her hand as she settled back into her monotonous paperwork. "Oh, and Team one! You will need realistic disguises. Before you head home, Shizune will help each of you assemble an acceptable disguise. That means no orange, Naruto."

Kakashi blindly followed his team out of the Hokage's office, reminiscing about the last time that he had used a disguise on a mission. He had kept the sequin gloves as a souvenir, having developed some masochistic attachment to them.

"Haha, Sakura! Do you think they'll make you shave your head?" Naruto flicked her short pink locks, holding up a hand to cover the smile that everyone already knew was there.

"Idiot!" Sakura growled, smacking his hand away, "Of course they won't! I'll probably just have to dye it." Her green eyes slanted mischievously over to the slouched frame of her former sensei, "If anyone here is gonna have their head shaved it's Kakashi-sensei."

Kakashi widened his visible eye, looking down at their impish grins suspiciously, "What's wrong with my hair?" he asked. The noticeable space between himself and his two former students increased fractionally.

"It intimidates people." Sai cut in knowledgably, "It says in my book that people who have wild, unkept appearances tend to make other people feel uncomfortable."

Naruto collapsed, clutching his stomach mirthfully and wiping imaginary tears from his eyes. Sakura giggled, covering a smirk with her hand as her green eyes swept over his tense form. Sai just nodded sagely.

_Children can be cruel, wicked things._

Kakashi pouted, reaching up to pat his fluffy silver-white locks, "You hear that?" He ruffled his hair fondly, "They're on to us."

* * *

_All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto. There will be a couple of my own later on though, but don't worry, they're there for plot purposes only _

_Thankyou for reading! And please don't hesitate to review!_

_~Flinty_


	2. Chapter 2

"Sai! I thought that Shizune was supposed to help you with your disguise?" Sakura shrieked in dismay, timidly poking the enormous, frazzled grey beard that dangled down to his navel. _It looks like a dead badger..._

Sai frowned, confused, "She said it was endearing." He fished out a pair of large, circular spectacles from the pouch he had slung across his hip, "Isn't the purpose of a disguise to cover or distort one's appearance enough for one to become unrecognizable?" He breathed on the thick lenses, cleaned them on the hem of his ghoulish cloak, and placed them over his eyes.

"Well...yes." Sakura fixed him with a wide-eyed stare, willing him to understand, "But that doesn't mean that you had to look like a creepy eighty-year-old man!"

"...I don't understand." Sai blinked at her owlishly.

Sakura sighed loudly in frustration. She was about to lecture him when Naruto's whiny voice called out from the trees to the right of the dirt path they were on.

"Sakura-chaaan! I need your help!"

The medic ninja raised her eyes exasperatedly to the heavens_, Why am I the only one with any sense around here?_ She took one last pitying glance at the boy before her as he adjusted his theatrically large black hooded robe. _I should just leave now._ Doing just that, Sakura leapt through the bushes towards Naruto. _Heaven knows what I'll find there..._

As she jumped through the forest she thought smugly about her own outfit. It was so much more normal than Sai's freakish vampire robe. In fact, she had kept her outfit relatively similar to her usual uniform, swapping her red and pink ensemble for a green and brown skirt and vest. After henge'ing many ridiculous hair styles overtop of her vibrant pink tresses,the two kunoichi had decided that blonde was definitely her color. Shizune had offered to help her dye it with a temporary hair dye that would come out after about five washes. Sakura had been surprisingly pleased with the turnout, she thought it gave her more of a grown up look and that people would take her more seriously. She had purposefully neglected brushing it yesterday and today, resulting in a choppy, wild look. _Intimidating as Sai would put it. _Sakura chuckled to herself.

Choosing a disguise had been a relatively quick and easy process. It was the amusing game of dress up between Shizune and herself that had turned the simple task into a two hour-long excursion. When they had finally finished, stumbling out of the storage room in a fit of giggles, they had needed to retrieve Naruto from Ichiraku's so that he could pick out a disguise. _That boy can't stay in one place for a minute! _Anyway, it had been a fun time.

She trotted into the clearing, chuckling to herself over the mental image of Shizune's pretty face decorated with a big, hairy caterpillar of a unibrow. Her laughter ceased and she tripped over her feet in shock when she saw her blonde-haired teammate.

Naruto smiled sheepishly at her, his purple painted cheeks dimpling adorably. Sakura, despite her annoyance, couldn't wipe away the smile that grew on her face. _Can't leave him alone for one second._

"I'm afraid to ask." Her attempt at mimicking her sensei's dry sense of humor fell through when she giggled.

Naruto smiled widely, encouraged by her laughter, "Shizune gave me this make-up kit to cover up the marks on my cheeks." Sakura walked over to kneel before him, peering doubtfully at his decorated face. _Well, they're covered all right.._.

"But why did you use purple, Naruto?" She lightly held his chin in her hands, tilting it from side to side to get a better appreciation of his handiwork. She pretended not to notice how his cheeks turned a darker shade of purple at her touch. Sakura tsked, the boy was a complete and utter mess.

He handed over the make-up kit, nervously launching into a jumbled story about how the many colors had confused and mislead him. Sakura took a damp cloth, only half listening to the boy prattle on, and wiped the paint away carefully. He was lucky that she had come when she did, any longer and it would have dried onto his face. Then they would have had to make up some ridiculous story to explain his deformity, like it was a symptom of some rare and incurable disease.

"Here, I think this color would go better with your complexion."

Naruto paused, mid-sentence, and peered suspiciously at the indicated color. _As if I'm the one who doesn't know what I'm doing!_ Without waiting for him to say anything, she started dabbing the face paint over his cheeks. It took a little while because Naruto kept forgetting not to move, but when she was done she sat back and looked at her work proudly. After much work and deliberation, her teammate actually looked like a normal human being!

"There you go, all done." She smiled at him, and Naruto beamed at her, his blue eyes glittering happily. Leaping up, he jammed a faded brown hat overtop his spiky blonde locks. Despite the disquieting resemblance her teammate's stance had to the 'Mighty Guy Pose', Sakura forced herself to look at him and scrutinize his wardrobe. While she found it to be a little bland (all of his clothes were various shades of brown!), it was effective and wouldn't attract attention. _This whole not-wearing-orange thing is working pretty good. _

They raced back to the main path where Sai was waiting for them. Actually, Naruto raced her and Sakura just humored him because she was more mature but didn't want to hurt his feelings.

Crashing obnoxiously through the leaves and branches onto the path, Naruto whooped victoriously. Not the least bit sour at her defeat, Sakura decided that she was glad that they were a days travel away from their destination. All of the running and jumping would hopefully tire Naruto down. And if he kept watch tonight maybe he would be able to act relatively calm when they met up with the rogue nin...And if they just so happened to race again after he was all tired and worn out, and she happened to beat him...well, then that would be okay too. Sakura covered her evil grin behind her gloved hand, already choreographing her victory dance in her mind.

At that moment, Kakashi leapt down from the trees on the other side of the path, apparently done changing into his disguise as well. As he slowly rose up into his telltale slouch, Sakura cast her critical gaze on the form of her sensei. Naruto and Sai's blunders had made her doubtful of the male species' ability to disguise themselves as a whole. Fortunately, Kakashi's clothing was remarkably unremarkable and drab.

Everything was black.

He had even tastefully added a pair of queer, Shino-like goggles and a large scarf to the ensemble. The goggles were pushed up, exposing his expressionless wink, and the thick scarf was wrapped around the lower part of his face. The latter didn't surprise Sakura in the slightest. _And he's probably wearing his mask under that too! Gosh, how does he breathe?_

As her former sensei bent down to peer warily at Sai's dead badger, _I mean beard!_ Sakura found a major flaw in his disguise. His hair. His silvery white locks looked like they did every day, the downy strands fluffing up as if he had a chronic case of bed-head. Which, Sakura had realized over time, he actually did. All in all, it was as much of a defining feature as his Sharingan was. To leave it unchanged was as nonsensical as walking around with a large neon sign saying, "Hello! I'm the famous copy-cat ninja and I'm here to assassinate you!" would be. Sakura shook her head, _Why did God make females the only one's with any brains?_

"Kakashi-sensei, I think you need to do something about your hair. It's too much of a give-away."

He looked at her solemnly, one hand experimentally tugging at Sai's beard, "Hmmm," He straightened slowly, as if he were exhausted, and looked at her with some trepidation, "I thought you were joking about that whole shaving my head thing, Sakura-chan."

At the mention of mowing down their former sensei's dignity, Naruto crowed with excitement and pumped his fist in the air.

"Hahaha, Kaka-sensei! You're gonna look so-"

"Actually! I think I might have just the thing!" Sakura talked loudly over her teammate, rifling through her pack as she was struck with inspiration. She pulled out a tube of hair styling gel, beaming at her own genius, "Ino got me this for my birthday last month and if there is any hair product on this earth that could make your hair lie flat, this is it! It smells good too-white nectarine and pink coral flower with a hint of citrus!

Kakashi's shoulders slumped.

Naruto collapsed against Sai in a violent fit of giggles. The copy-nin gazed forlornly at the ground for a moment before shrugging resignedly, "Well, if you think it's necessary..." He sighed tragically.

His disappointed attitude made Sakura frown. _He acts like I just kicked a puppy! _She briefly considered kicking one of his ninken the next time she saw them but then thought better of it. Some of those dogs looked kinda mean.

"Sit down, sensei!" Sakura chirped, already kneeling, and patted a particularly dusty patch of dirt before her. Kakashi reluctantly tugged off his goggles and unwrapped his scarf before walking over. _Still _w_earing that mask-Called it!_

Suddenly realizing that he was leaning against what appeared to be a sketchy old man, Naruto yelped in surprise. He immediately began interrogating Sai on his creepy attire, gesticulating wildly in horror. If Sakura didn't know her teammate better, she would say that Sai had adopted an almost defensive tone. She saw Kakashi relax slightly as the two other team members fell into comfortable, familiar bickering.

_Alright, here goes nothing, _she took a deep breath, _Please don't let me lose any fingers!_ Sakura ran her fingers hesitantly through his hair, testing the waters, a little afraid that she might find some small animal nesting in there. She was surprised to find that the thin silvery white strands were incredibly soft and remarkably untangled. She suppressed a gasp as her probing fingers were swathed in velvety warmth, a distinctive musky smell wafting gently over her. She froze, feeling a little dizzy, _Woah! Sensei smells really nice.._

_What the hell? _She snapped herself out of her temporary stupor, _That's not fair!_ Sakura glared accusingly at the feathery tuft of pale hair clenched in her fist, _He has nice hair and he doesn't even care! I know so many girls that would kill to-_

"Is strangling it part of the 'make your hair lie flat' plan?" He winced, "Take it easy Sakura-chan, I have a very sensitive scalp."

"Oh, sorry Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura poured a little gel into her hands, "You just had a big knot that I needed to take care of!" He didn't say anything, and she started to pat down his hair, more carefully this time. Sakura found herself spreading the gel through his hair with exaggerated gentleness, the unexpected baby-softness of his hair making her feel a strange motherly tenderness towards him. She massaged it deep into his roots, knowing that was where the cause of the problem was. As her fingers kneaded along the base of his skull, he surprised her by humming a deep moan of contentment. As he unconsciously leant back into her touch, closing his eyes blissfully, she found herself wondering when was the last time someone had touched him like this.

She massaged slow circles around his temples, smiling slightly when he sighed deeply and his shoulders relaxed. Kakashi was always so withdrawn, never standing close enough to accidentally brush against anyone else. The few times she had hugged him in celebration he had immediately stiffened up until she released him. The even fewer times that she had latched onto him in a mess of frustrated, angry tears he had coughed awkwardly and patted her timidly on the top of the head. She had never seen him instigate so much as a handshake to anyone. He shied away from any possible hugs and cringed under any looming pats on the back. Whenever he handed his teammates objects there was always a calculated amount of space between his fingers and theirs.

Kakashi had erected an invisible barrier between himself and everyone around him. She didn't know if he had always been like this, but all of the older jounin operated smoothly around his boundaries with practiced ease. To have him trust her enough to permit this infinitesimal infraction was shocking to say the least. But Sakura didn't kid herself, the only reason he allowed it was because it was for the benefit of the mission. _But still,_ she stealthily rolled a silky silver strand between her thumb and pointer finger in the guise of smoothing down a resilient tuft on the top of his head, t_he fact that he's even letting me touch him has to count for something. _

That's why, no matter _how_ tempted she was, she would squelch down the urge to contort his hair into a clownish imitation of Guy-sensei's hairdo. _Next time,_ she promised herself, grinning evilly.

"There! All done!" She wiped her hands on her skirt and leggings, "Turn around so I can fix the front." Her voice was loud and Kakashi seemed to jolt back to reality. He stiffly turned around, looking at the ground through his lashes. Sakura blinked and wondered if he was feeling embarrassed. _Well it makes sense,_ Sakura sighed with a keen disappointment, _I don't know many guys that actually enjoy having their hair styled with fruity hair gel._

Sakura also knew that she had a tendency to overanalyze simple situations and put her own perceptions on people that were hard to understand. It was a well known fact that Kakashi didn't feel normal emotions like embarrassment. _He reads porn in public for crying out loud! _One look at his half-lidded eyes and she knew that the man possessed the same emotional spectrum as a toothbrush.

Trying to cleanse her mind of the mental image of a toothbrush screaming shrilly as it was slowly raised to a yawning mouth, Sakura quickly brushed a few wisps into place. She smirked, looking at her work appraisingly. _I bet Ino couldn't have done that! _With his hair pressed down gently against his skull to frame his face, the majority of it brushed to the side to cover his Sharingan, Sakura had to admit to herself that her sensei was a very handsome man. Even with half of his face masked, he couldn't hide it. She smiled, maybe if he let her do his hair when they got back to the village he would get a girlfriend. _And stop reading those dirty books! _

As he gruffly mumbled his thanks and they both got up, Sakura found herself thinking about who in the village the enigmatic copy-nin would want to go out with. He probably had some weird fetish or standard that none of the kunoichi lived up to. But Sakura didn't kid herself. The real reason Kakashi was single wasn't because there was a problem with the entire female population, it was because there was a with problem him. But then again, maybe she was biased. After all, years of sadistic training and convoluted lessons tended to warp your view of a person...

They all gathered their supplies before leaping into the trees to start the day's travel. Naruto was still laughing at Sai's constume, but Sakura was too distracted to join in. And besides, if she didn't know better, she would think that the poor artist was a little distressed. As she fell into the familiar routine of jumping from branch to branch, the mental game of pairing her sensei with random kunoichi from the village occupied her thoughts.

She giggled at the thought of her former teacher getting with her present teacher. Two words accurately summed up that potential relationship-_Spousal abuse!_ That would be the funniest thing ever! Sakura chuckled at the mental image of Tsunade bashing Kakashi's head in and Naruto peered at her strangely. Her mom always told her that she appreciated slap-stick humor too much, but whatever.

Not only would Tsunade routinely beat him into submission, she definitely had a couple of decades on him. _Nope, _Sakura thought to herself, _Tsunade-sama definitely isn't the one for him. _A couple humorous and disastrous pairings later and Sakura had made her decision. If there was one girl in the entire village that she would approve of going out with her awkward, but strangely endearing, former sensei, it was Shizune.

Sakura wriggled with excitement. Maybe she should try to get them together! _Oh my gosh, it'll be just like the movies! _And she could get Ino to help her-this was going to be so fun!

At the thought of her best friend, Sakura found herself remembering a conversation they had overheard in the hot springs one time. She skipped from branch to branch, her head in the clouds.

* * *

_A large group of the village's kunoichi had all gone together to the hot springs for a day of relaxation and gossip. Sakura was soaking next to Ino and TenTen, relishing the steamy warmth around her, when an interesting conversation popped up on her other side. _

_Kurenai-sensei was giggling and playfully rebuking another woman who was snickering to herself. Sakura lazily cracked an eye open and saw that it was one of the chunin-proctors, Anko Mitarashi._

_"Anko," Kurenai chuckled, "He probably wears that mask because of creepy stalkers like you!" A group of girls that were listening in all laughed at Kurenai's accusation._

_"That's not true," Anko sniffed, pretending to be offended, "If Kakashi didn't want me after him, then he wouldn't act so mysterious all the time." _

_Sakura perked up, what were they saying about Kakashi-sensei? This was the first time she had noticed his name pop up in a conversation between the female jounin. She saw Ino raise an eyebrow in interest out of the corner of her eye. Sakura sat up a little straighter, her own interest peaked. This was her chance to find out something about her secretive sensei-maybe if it was really good she would tell Naruto._

_"Oh, Anko, you're just making that up to justify yourself." Kurenai shook her head half-heartedly, "Don't you remember the last time we all went to the bar together? You poured your drink on his lap so that you could 'towel him off'," She made quotation marks with her fingers at this, "The only reason you didn't get a chidori to the chest was because he fell off his stool." _

_Anko tilted her head to the side, tapping her chin contemplatively, "I don't know. I think he knows I like it when they squirm. Tricky little devil." _

_Sakura's mouth fell open. Okay, so maybe she wouldn't tell Naruto that...Ino nudged her elbow beneath the steamy water, indicating that she wanted to talk about this later._

_"Do you all remember Shizune's eighteenth birthday party?" Anko grinned._

_Sakura's eyes widened at the collective lusty moans that sounded from the surrounding women. What in the world could have happened at Shizune's eighteenth birthday party? It was Shizune for crying out loud!_

_"How we played truth or dare-" One woman started._

_"And Kakashi was dared to take all eighteen of her birthday spankings-" a sultry voice swooned._

_"From Maito Guy? I remember he-" the sentence dissolved into excited squeals and splashes._

_"Girls, girls!" Kurenai raised her hands, looking mildly amused at their excitement, "Maito Guy's not exactly gentle. The poor kid was crying by the fifth stroke!" she reminded them._

_There was a pause in the dreamy sighs and breathy moans._

_"I know," purred Anko, "It was so hot."_

_The admiring sounds picked up again, and Sakura's eyes were opened wide now. Had the entire female population of the village's ninja been hoarding a secret obsession with her sensei? The idea was more than a little disturbing. Sakura had never even thought of her slightly awkward, unsociable teacher in that way...Which was probably a good thing, considering he was fourteen years her senior. _

_As the conversation dissolved into passionate exclamations about her sensei's immaculate body and what should be done to it, Sakura thought about the man that had been a constant presence in her life for the last couple of years. _

_If there was one thing Kakashi was, it was predictable. Sakura could always depend upon him to be the same old sensei, reacting cooly in battle and clumsily in touchy situations. She knew that she didn't actually know who he was, but Sakura was certain that she had a general understanding of the man. She thought that she knew who he was and who he was not. But, at the discovery that he was the most sought-after bachelor in Konoha, her perception of him was changed against her will. Did Kakashi secretly have a steamy, promiscuous sex life run rampant? How could he? He was so... standoffish sometimes._

_Sakura frowned as Anko boasted about her intricate, foolproof plan to clog her sensei's shower drains beyond all repair and force him to shower in public. A group of kunoichi collaborated on the best strategy for stealing Kakashi's underwear while he was still wearing it. Someone volunteered to almost fatally injure him so that they could keep him captive in the hospital forever._

_Ahh... that would explain the sudden discombobulation concerning sponge-bath sign ups the last time he was hospitalized. _

_Sakura's fears eased. As the conversations spiraled into even dirtier and creepier plans of abduction and, what sounded to Sakura like torture, she was selfishly reassured. Her world was safe because, in the end, the image of her sensei had not been tainted into that a sinful, sex-addict. Rather, she now knew him to be a misfortunate, yet thankfully unaware, target for Konoha's kunoichi to vent their sexual repression on. _

_Sakura settled deeper into the warm water, closing her eyes with satisfaction. Kakashi was still her slightly awkward, unsociable sensei. _

_Even if he was completely oblivious to the fact that a large group of women were currently plotting to strip him naked, cover him with whipped cream, and lick it off him... Ew!_

* * *

Sakura snorted incredulously as she remembered the ridiculousness of the women's obsession with her sensei. _And they said that I was obsessed! _Sakura herself had thought that she was obsessed with her former Uchiha teammate, but none of her thoughts had ever reached that level of intensity. She shuddered, _I hope I'm not like that when I'm older, that would be so scary..._

She considered warning Kakashi about the imminent assault, but reconsidered. If there was one thing she didn't want, it was a horde of furious kunoichi on her back. She valued her sensei and was honestly a little worried for his safety, but she decided that informing him of the impending attack wouldn't really change the outcome. And besides, he wasn't an elite jounin for nothing! She just hoped that he would be able to recognize the danger when it came and take evasive action.

She looked at the limber silhouette of her sensei springing cat-like from branch to branch ahead of her. She squinted against the glare, trying to see a little of the man that the other kunoichi saw. She took in the sight of his wiry muscles visibly flexing and coiling, his body contorting into graceful acrobatic positions of controlled power. Yes, he was beautiful. But when she looked at him, it wasn't his beauty that caused a wave of admiration to well up inside her. It was his strength, a deadly gracefulness so fast it was frightening.

Kakashi was strong, had always been strong, and always would be strong. Sakura knew that he would protect his teammates with his life. She would never admit it, but... In her mind, he was an indestructible, unstoppable force that never failed to come through in the end. Sakura felt comforted as she watched Kakashi leap nimbly before her, knowing that there was not a situation where he would not come out on top.

* * *

_Think I should let everyone know right here that this is not supposed to be a KakaSaku story. So sorry for anybody that got their hopes up! I'm not gonna lie though, I frequently have to go back and rewrite stuff because for some reason it keeps slipping into precious little moments between those two… Not sure if I'm fighting against the flow of the story there but ah well. _

_Thanks for reading! And review, review, review!_

_~Flinty_

_... _

_Poor, poor Kakashi!_


	3. Chapter 3

…

_Hah! Who said I wouldn't be good at undercover missions?_ Naruto covered his smug smile with his hand, pretending to yawn, _I freakin' rock!_

They had walked into the rogue ninja hideout not two hours ago, and already he was being shown around the encampment. That's right, Uzumaki Naruto was the only member of infiltrating Team 1 that was given a tour of the inner workings of the base. He was the _leader_.

Granted, it _might_ have been because he was literally the first to walk into the hideout-but Naruto thought it was far more likely that the missing ninja had immediately picked up on his untapped leadership skills. He grinned. The other, less talented, members of his team were unpacking supplies, bartering, or mingling with the outlaws. Naruto glanced over his shoulder at Sai and was a little astonished to see the socially retarded boy had somehow surrounded himself with other hunched over, bearded old guys in a variety of cowls and capes. _...Creepy..._

Sakura, with her extensive knowledge of poisons, was fraternizing with the enemy with suspicious ease. Naruto squinted, if he didn't know better he could've sworn he just saw a sketchy-looking man slip a small vial into his teammate's hand. He quickly shook his head, T_hat's ridiculous_! _Sakura-chan would never..._

Naruto looked to his left and saw Kakashi and a large group of brawny men playing a card game of sorts. His sensei swiftly whipped out his Icha Icha book and dropped it ostentatiously into a growing pile of money and other valuables. Naruto's eyes widened, _Kaka-sensei must have a really good hand, there's no way he would bet his Icha Icha if he wasn't sure he would win._

Focusing back to the task at hand, Naruto nodded in a dignified fashion to his tour guide. The man raised an eyebrow.

Naruto was led into a tent holding all of the supplies, namely, the rogue Sand-ninjas' lethal poisons and their respective antidotes. _Yes! _The Jinchuriki spinned around, allowing his face to assume a moderately impressed expression. This was fairly easy, considering how impressive their stock actually was. Crates upon crates of small bottles and vials of differing colors were stacked up to the ceiling. This was more than they had expected, far more. _Sakura-chan has to find her way in here somehow_, Naruto knew that she was the only one who would be able to determine just how many of these bottles were antidotes and how many poisons. Hopefully there were only a dozen or so poisons and matching antidotes, and the rest were just more of the same. Otherwise the rest of the Team would have to create a distraction while she spent precious time categorizing the many different concoctions.

Naruto followed his guide out of the tent, a little more serious than before. They hadn't expected the rogue ninja to be so organized or so well equipped. He pursed his lips with determination. Just because they hadn't expected it didn't mean that they weren't prepared or couldn't complete the mission.

His guide stopped outside of a large tent that was decorated with a twisting gold, black, and red oriental pattern. _Hmmm, these guys are awfully fancy for outlaws._

"This is the largest and wealthiest tent in the camp. It's also the tent of our leader, Hajime-sama. He demands that he meet with all of our beneficiaries." He stared at Naruto meaningfully, "So...If you want me to keep my position then I would suggest you get in there and make nice, huh?"

Naruto's eyes widened, "Oh! Of course!" Trying to regain some semblance of composure he hastily smoothed his expression and nodded aristocratically at his tour guide, "Thank you."

When the Jinchuriki pushed confidently through the tent flap, the smooth material caressing his fingertips, he was instantly immersed into a different world. Luxuriant carpets with intricate, puzzling designs covered the ground entirely. Rooms were sectioned off by thick, gauzy drapes of red-tinged material, casting a hazy sunset glow throughout the tent. Before him was a small, old man. He was seated, cross-legged, on a flat golden cushion before a low dark wood table. Clothed in loose, lavish robes of purple so dark it was almost black, he seemed a dignified figure-_Wait, woah! What the hell is that?_ Naruto stumbled in shock. The man slowly picked up the steaming teacup from the low, dark wood table and raised it to eye level, nodding to Naruto.

"Tea?"

Naruto nodded, not trusting himself to say anything when all he could think about was how big the old man's elaborate headdress was. _It's gotta weigh at least fifteen pounds!_ Atop of the stooped elder's head sat an enormous tasseled headdress that somewhat resembled a squatting alligator. _Or is it an ape?_

A cup of tea was poured and slid over towards him. Naruto didn't drink it. _Those googly-eyes are watching me..._ Hijame stared at him inscrutably and Naruto shifted uneasily, _Did I offend him? Should I have drank it? Is that freaky hat going to eat me?_

The tension evaporated when the old man started laughing heartily, clutching his stomach. Naruto forced a strained grin, his left eye slightly squinted, and laughed a little uncertainly. _What in the world is he laughing at? It's a good thing my mission is to take him out-he's crazy!_

"Ha. Ha. Ha. You do mean business." Hijame stroked his thin, grey goatee thoughtfully, "This is good." He leant back, smirking at Naruto, "I thought that perhaps because you were so young you would not be serious."

Naruto bowed his head, "Hijame-sama." _And I thought that because you were such a wrinkly old fart you would be serious._

The next two hours the rogue ninja leader explained, in great detail, their trade and their ambitions for the future. Naruto listened with rapture, taking mental notes whenever he could. When that was over and done with, Hijame took the liberty of lecturing the young Jinchuriki on valuable life lessons. Naruto found himself struggling to pay attention. By the time the old man had finished telling some eclectic proverb about a gambling monkey and a seasick lemur Naruto's cheeks hurt from smiling encouragingly. _That's it! Next time Kaka-sensei can be team leader again!_ _This is the worst._

"Oh! You should not let an old man go on so. Ha. Ha. Ha." Hijame finally seemed to notice Naruto's lackluster expression,

"You may go now, we can discuss our plans tomorrow."

Filled with dread at what disturbing story tomorrow would bring, Naruto stiffly rose up and hurried out of the tent. He all but sprinted towards the guest tent, whisking away before the old man could remember another sentimental story. _There is absolutely no way that man is a missing ninja, _Naruto shook his head in disbelief, _He didn't abandon any village-He was probably kicked out!_

Dragging his feet, Naruto tiredly made his way through the tent towards an unoccupied cot in the middle. He fell, as dramatically as possible, face-first onto the bedding.

"What's wrong, Naruto?" Sakura asked curiously from the cot next to his. _Score! I got the bed next to Sakura-chan!,_ Naruto fist-pumped mentally.

He groaned helpfully into his pillow as an answer. Really, it was best that he spare his teammate the nasty details. It would just make her sick and then she would have to perform medical jutsu on herself.

Naruto, lying face-first on the cushion, exhaled in a great huff and let his breath warm his face. He repeated the process a couple of times, the half-hearted self-induced suffocation calming him. After transferring his stress and annoyance into the pillow, Naruto rolled over onto his side to smile happily at the medic-nin.

Sakura's mouth twisted as she tried not to smile at his antics, "You are so weird, Naruto."

But before he could retort in what was sure to be a very witty reply, their sensei stomped in with a violent swinging of the tent flaps. Both Naruto and Sakura were so shocked by the older man's emotional display of infantile behavior they just stared.

Kakashi huffed and crossed his arms petulantly. Naruto thought he could see the faint outline of a pout underneath the mask.

"What." Kakashi snapped, his expression a confusing cross between a wink and a glare. Naruto's mouth fell open, unable to formulate any response due to his temporary paralysis.

Luckily, Sakura was capable of coherent speech, "Um...sensei?" She blinked in confusion, "Why are you only wearing one shoe?" Naruto inwardly sighed, _Leave it to Sakura-chan to address his fashion choices when Kaka-sensei decides to shed a few years and act like a pouty kid._

Kakashi glowered darkly and the temperature dropped a couple degrees.

"And...And your scarf and goggles...where?" She trailed off lamely at the growing tension in their sensei's slender frame.

The propagation of hostility in the room was thankfully brought to a cease by Sai's clumsy entrance into the already too crowded tent. Kakashi sulkily took this as his cue to shuffle rigidly over to the farthest cot and stare accusingly at the wall.

Sai, characteristically oblivious to the emotional turbulence he had just interrupted, looked around blankly before lying down on the closest bed. Which was, _of course,_ next to Naruto. Sakura and the Jinchuriki shared mutual looks of exasperation and uneasiness. That is, Naruto looked at her, exasperated, while Sakura frowned uneasily. A strained silence fell upon Team One's tent. The sound of crickets chirping and a light drizzling rain echoed awkwardly through the tense atmosphere. Naruto felt like he needed to sneeze but was afraid to.

"He lost that little orange book he's always reading." Sai supplied conversationally, "apparently it doesn't matter that you have a winning hand if everybody plays by their own rules. It's a good thing the game ended when it did, I think he was going to bet his-"

There was a shattering crack from Kakashi's side of the tent. The three of them whipped their heads over to see that their normally calm sensei had broken the metal headboard of his cot. Naruto swallowed.

* * *

"All in all, they seem like a good group to trade with. I especially liked that blonde boy, he is a very engaging conversationist if I do say so myself." The old man had to reach up to keep his gargantuan headdress steady as he nodded amicably to the man across from him. A dark chuckle filled the dimly lit tent. The elderly man squinted and saw the man's broad shoulders move up and down with the motion.

"Makoto." The shadowed outline shook its head slowly.

"Hijame-sama?" Makoto fingered one of the silver tassels on his headdress, a nervous habit. How did the man before him always make him feel as if he were a child? _I'm at least fifty years older than him, _the old man mused, _Shouldn't it be the other way around? _But Makoto knew that one didn't become the leader of a notorious band of rogue ninja by being foolish. Hijame could be brutish and a little sadistic at times, but if there was one thing the old man knew about him it was that he was wily as a fox. Makoto smiled to himself, _That reminds me of that one parable about the fox and the sequined handkerchief..._

"Sharingan Kakashi has infiltrated our camp." Hijame whispered, his voice a low rumble in his muscular chest.

Makoto squeaked as his enormous headdress crashed to the floor beside him, he had accidently yanked too hard on some tassles. He let it lay where it had fallen.

"What-What?" The elderly man's hands shook and he peered around anxiously, as if the Copy-nin would spring at him any moment. Another sinister chuckle was the only response he was given.

"Why?" Makoto, pointed a withered finger accusingly at Hajime, "If you knew it was him, then why did you let him in? Are you trying to kill us all?" The old man's voice was a emphatic whisper.

"Relax, Makoto." Hijame stalked around the low table towards the old man, picked up the ridiculous headdress, and replaced it smoothly to his balding crown, "I would have thought that, after all that we'd accomplished together, you would have more trust in me."

'I knew who he was the second one of my men informed me that one of our beneficiaries had a long scar across his left eye and had white hair...Wouldn't have expected him to bet his Icha Icha though.' Hijame stood up and turned away from the older man, crossing his corded arms behind his back, 'By that time though, it was too late for me to do anything. He was already in. We need to assume that those who came with him are enemies as well."

Makoto relaxed slightly, reassured by his leader's confident words, "What do you suggest we do, Hijame-sama?"

There was a slight pause where the tall man deliberated.

"We take advantage of the situation." Hijame ran his fingers thoughtfully across the soft material of the tent wall before him, "With our weapons, he can't afford to make one mistake. He's as good as ours if we play our cards right. All we'd need to do is immobilize him long enough to get him on the market and we'd be swimming in riches."

Makoto nodded to himself, it made sense. Although there was one thing that still bothered his aged mind, "But how do you plan on keeping him immobilized that long? You and I both know it will take at least two weeks to get to the nearest market, and that's discounting the interference Sand's been causing there recently. He's Sharingan Kakashi, there's no way we can contain him for a long period of time with just chakra-repressing handcuffs."

There was another silence, but it was darker than the first.

"As you know, I've been working on a new poison for the last month or so. It should be able to preoccupy him so that he is no longer a threat to us. However," Hijame chuckled to himself, " it hasn't been perfected yet."

"Hasn't been perfected yet? What do you mean it hasn't been perfected yet?" Makoto failed to realize how this was funny. If there was the slightest chance of the Copy-ninja breaking free, the man was sure to find it. And then he would die!

Hijame pulled back the tent entrance to peer at the guest tent across the encampment. The silver moonlight illuminated him and Makoto, despite himself, felt a tingle of fear at the intimidating sight.

"I haven't thought of an antidote."

* * *

_And so the plot thickens..._

_Makoto means "sincerity"and Hijame means "origin" or "beginning" in Japanese. Buuut I just thought I'd let you know that for some reason Hijame turns into Hajime later on. And I don't know what the hell Hajime means! So yah… that's a womp. :P_

_Thanks for reading! And thanks for letting me know what you think-I really appreciate hearing from anyone who reads._

_~Flinty_

…

_Does anyone else think that Kakashi as a toddler would be just freakin' adorable! … Would anybody read a story about that?_


	4. Chapter 4

...

"So you see, the camel was really looking for understanding and acceptance the whole time-he didn't mean to step on those amphibians." The old man looked imploringly to his audience, his face wrinkling with tearful passion.

Naruto tried to stop his left eye from twitching, _That was the longest, most disturbing story that I have ever heard in my entire life_, he felt squeamish. _Why would anyone call him Hajime-__sama__? _

"Mhmm, that reminds me of another proverb. You'll like it, it's about a young ox that has trouble controlling his flatulence and is cruelly isolated from-"

"Oh _HELL_ no!" Naruto sprang up from his seat cushion, both of his knees popping stiffly with the sudden movement. He pointed accusingly at the little old man, "I really didn't want to kill you! But that last story about the sadistic camel squashing those little frogs has just done it!"

Naruto, enraged at the thought of having to endure another pointless story in that monotonous voice, missed the steely glint in the old man's eyes. He whipped out a kunai and swiftly lobbed it at the old man's voice box.

There was a sharp clang of metal striking metal. Naruto's kunai clattered to the floor, a shurikan falling ominously beside it.

He hesitated for a moment, taken off guard, before pulling out another kunai from his pouch. _Where did that come from? _Blue eyes flickered across the inside of the tent, searching for the hidden attacker. Why was it that he was just now noticing all of the rooms sectioned off by thick, gauzy red fabric? Naruto raised his arm, ready to deflect more shurikan from his face, and backed up slowly so that his back was to a wall.

The old man slowly rose up, his aged eyes gleaming with unexpected mischievousness. "You really should have paid more attention to the parable about the insolent crow that had an unhealthy obsession for pickled watermelon rinds," Naruto felt a knot of unease twist in his stomach as those eyes stared at him meaningfully, somber despite the ridiculous words, "If you had, you wouldn't be in this situation."

Naruto frowned, about to make an angry retort, when he was interrupted by a girlish scream. _That sounds like Sakura!_ The camp was filled with the sound of many stamping footsteps and shouting voices. Naruto's eyes widened and he turned his head to try and see the scuffle going on outside through the thin opening in the tent flap.

During the split second where his attention was diverted, two thick arms wrapped around him from behind. Naruto yelped in surprise and fear as the silky material was cocooned about him. His arms were pinned to his sides. He froze, blue eyes wide, as a dark laugh rumbled through the broad chest that was pressed against his back. He struggled madly, some type of primitive, animalistic fear surging up within him. Before he could remember the kunai in his clenched fist, he was thrown to the floor, the silky material tangling around him.

Naruto struggled furiously, trying to free himself from the thick fabric. A sharp blade was shoved up against his neck, and he stilled, breathing hard. Through the red film ensnaring him, he could see the hazy outline of his attacker bending over him. There was more shouting from outside the tent. The blade pressed harder against his throat, drawing blood, and Naruto had to tilt his head back to avoid a fatal injury. There was a derisive snicker and the gauzy fabric was ripped away from him in one fluid motion. As the thin covering was torn from him, a feeling of nakedness surged through him.

Before he knew what had happened, Naruto was flipped over, his kunai was kicked out of his hand, and cold metal encircled his wrists. He had been handcuffed.

A large boot stomped between his shoulder blades, pinning him to the floor like a bug. The air whooshed out of his lungs painfully. The sharp blade returned to his throat.

_How, _Naruto blinked in shock, _how did this happen?_

"Makoto," a deep voice resounded above him, "Go block all radio transmissions and tell the men to bring the rest of the infiltrators in here."

"Yes, Hijame-sama."

Naruto frowned, momentarily confused. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the old man bowed to the man restraining him. _Wait, that old man wasn't Hijame-sama? He was just pretending to be? Shit! That means-_

"Haha, you've been played, little man." Naruto growled at the unpleasant voice, "Did you all really think we weren't expecting this? If you wanna kill me, you're gonna have to do better than that."

Naruto's eyes widened as the realization fully struck him. This man, the one pinning him to the floor, holding a blade to his neck, and laughing at him, was the one he had come here to kill! The old man, _Makoto, he was called,_ had been nothing but a decoy the whole time! They had all been tricked.

"Try anything and they die!" a loud voice barked harshly outside of the tent.

_Oh no! Sakura-chan, Kaka-sensei, Sai!_

"No, Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura's panicked cry sounded a little strangled, "Just go! We'll be-" Naruto's eyes widened at the sound of flesh connecting with flesh. His stomach clenched at Sakura's gasp. _Sakura!_

But Naruto could only watch in horror as everything went wrong.

Sai and Sakura were dragged into the tent. Their wrists were handcuffed behind them, and each of them had a kunai pressed so hard into their necks that thin dribbles of blood had started spilling out. At least eight rogue ninja had them in their grasp, holding them still. Sai looked emotionless as always, but Sakura's face was flushed and contorted with anger.

Things couldn't be any more wrong.

Just then, Kakashi stepped through the tent opening. Naruto felt a warm wave of relief rush through him at the sight of his sensei. Kakashi held a kunai before him, his mismatched eyes glaring over his arm in an expression of icy hate. Killing intent rolled off of his tense form in waves, so palpable that it suffocated any sound within the tent mercilessly. Naruto had only ever seen his former sensei this angry, no, this _furious_ one time before. When Zabuza had rendered him incapable of protecting his students. Naruto smirked, despite the cold blade drawing blood from his neck, _Now they're in for it._

The Copy-ninja positioned himself against the tent wall so that he was facing the rogue ninja. He was on the balls of his feet, continuously shifting his weight. The sight reminded Naruto of how a cat crouches as it prepares to pounce, controlled and graceful.

Naruto held his breath and watched as Kakashi's eyes, one a steely grey and the other a devilish red, flitted quickly through the room. Even though he knew his sensei wasn't mad at him, he felt his heart stop when that icy glare swept over him.

Everyone held their breath, their eyes trained on Kakashi. Naruto felt Hijame's foot press harder into his back. His sensei stepped forward. All of the rogue ninja tensed, tightening their grip on their weapons.

Kakashi fell to his knees, kunai tumbling unceremoniously to the floor.

The sudden movement startled one of the rogue ninja, and he reflexively slashed their sensei across the chest. Sakura cried out, as if she had been the one wounded. Kakashi winced, but bowed his head submissively. There was a shocked silence as everyone in the room was confronted with the disquieting image of the famed Copy-Cat Ninja holding out his wrists meekly. _What...What just happened?_

Hesitating only for a moment, three rogue ninja quickly wrestled Kakashi's thinner frame to the floor. Roughly bending his arms behind his back, they held his wrists together high between his shoulder-blades. Any higher and they would be dislocating his shoulders. When he straightened one of his legs, the miniscule movement frightened one of the rogue ninja into kicking him in the ribs. Sakura sobbed drily.

He didn't struggle at all.

Handcuffs were snapped onto his wrists, as tight as possible. Multiple hands rubbed callously up and down his lithe body. Fingers scrabbled invasively in their search for any hidden weapons. His head was shoved down and his cheek was pressed into the carpet. Feathery bangs tumbled softly into mismatched eyes, the glossy silver strands shadowing his docile, accepting gaze.

Naruto tasted something bitter in his mouth.

_What just happened?_

* * *

Sakura snuggled her shivering self closer to the warm bodies of her teammates. She didn't even care that Naruto was snoring, or smelled, or sometimes attacked people in his sleep-she was freezing!

The grass was damp with cool beads of moisture, and it was seeping into her clothes and skin. _If I ever get out of this the first thing I'm doing is taking a nice warm bath!_ But just thinking about such toasty bliss that was beyond her reach was torturous, so she tried to think about something else. After a minute of careful speculation, Sakura realized that she was too cold to even think about anything else than how cold she was!

Right now she was sandwiched between Sai and Naruto, a desperate attempt to keep her body temperature above freezing. It actually wasn't so bad because, after a moment, Sai had snuggled up to her too. Normally this type of behavior would result in a big bump on the head, but, given the freezing circumstances, Sakura welcomed it gratefully. _Maybe wearing a big, ugly vampire cloak and a badger wasn't such a bad idea for a disguise..._

Sakura looped her handcuffed hands around Naruto, he had started to roll away from her. The sleeping boy mumbled something that sounded oddly like, 'Don't let the camel squish you!', and curled softly into her embrace. Sakura shivered and rolled her eyes, _Trust Naruto to be perfectly unfazed by all of this. _In fact, it really seemed like she was the only one who was upset that they had been found out, interrogated, and unable to contact their backup team. Everyone but her was sound asleep.

Even Kakashi, who had been treated the harshest, was asleep. Sakura lifted her head to peer over at her former sensei. He was lying a small distance from the three of them. As soon as she saw him she felt a strange protectiveness towards him swell within her. He was curled in on himself, his shoulders hunched and his knees brought up to his chest. To her, he looked delicate and bird-like because of the way he had buried his face into his shoulder. Or maybe it was because, for the first time ever, she had seen her her sensei submissively allow himself to get beaten.

_Why did he do that?_

She knew that he could have done something. Nevermind the fact that each of his teammates had a blade pressed into their necks, Sakura knew that he could've done _something_. He was the man who mastered over a thousand jutsu! He should've been able to do something! She found herself getting angry at him, but then stopped. It wasn't his fault, she just wanted someone to blame for how everything went wrong.

Sakura shivered again, feeling a familiar tightness in her throat and a stinging in the back of her eyes. This was her first time ever being interrogated and it was a little intense. Not that she was feeling a little like she was going to cry or anything. It had just been four hours of abrasive insults and threats intermingled with harsh punches and yanks at her hair. Nothing she couldn't handle. She was a kunoichi of Konoha that could split boulders with her tiny, pedicured foot. These guys didn't know who they were dealing with.

But all the same...She just wanted to go home.

The night was silent but for the whisper of leaves rustling in the wind, an eerie sound that played on her nerves. With all of her teammates asleep, she felt as if she were alone in the cold night. Alone in the world.

The rogue ninja had posted guards. They were standing a distance enough away that they couldn't hear or see her if she cried. Not that she would cry. Sakura sniffled pitifully, definitely _not_ crying.

"Sakura?"

She was startled by her sensei's hesitant whisper. He sounded hoarse, but the soft baritone of his voice soothed her slightly. _I thought he was asleep_, Sakura wondered if he had noticed her looking at him.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura was proud of how steady her voice was, she didn't sound upset at all. Not that she was upset.

She turned her head to see him wriggle towards her in an improvised version of an armless army crawl. Sakura would have laughed if she weren't so miserable, he looked ridiculous. He cast his grey eye, an obsidian glint in the shadows, over her slumbering teammates and herself. If Sakura didn't know better she would think he looked a little guilty, the downward tilt of his head an unconscious attempt to turn his face away. But the night was dark and she had to stop putting her own perceptions on the enigmatic Copy-ninja.

"Are you okay?" He whispered as if he didn't want either of the sleeping boys to overhear, and the childishness of the action touched her, "You should be getting some sleep."

_Tell me something I don't know..._She had no doubt that her body would greatly appreciate passing into temporary oblivion right about now. The only problem was that she was cold, aching, and just a _little_ bit miserable.

"It's so cold," she shivered to emphasize her point, "I can't sleep."

Kakashi nodded his head back, and hummed contemplatively. He peered at her inscrutably for a moment before scooting closer and ducking his head so she could hear him better.

"What I'm about to tell you is a secret that I expect you to take to the grave." his dark eye smoldered with intensity, "Can you do that?"

_Is he really going to tell me a secret?_ Sakura's eyes widened and she found herself nodding eagerly_. I can't believe he's going to tell me something instead of Naruto! _Sakura held her breath.

"When I was a young child I was deathly afraid of the dark, so I-"

"Sensei!"

Sakura frowned at him, "I'm not afraid of the dark!" She rolled her eyes, "Look, I appreciate your attempt at being the comforting adult figure in this situation but you don't have to make up self-deprecating stories to make me feel better!"

Kakashi looked away, frowning, "I wasn't lying to make you feel better Sakura-chan..." he mumbled around a prominent pout, "But if you don't want to hear my story then-"

"No!"

Sakura honestly didn't know why she stopped him. Maybe she just liked the sound of his voice, low and gentle on her ears compared to the raucous yells she had heard for the last four hours. Maybe there was something comforting, familiar about his presence that made her feel safe. Or maybe she just really couldn't resist hearing him divulge something about himself, even if it was a lie to make her feel better.

"No," She looked shyly up at him, "You can tell your story."

Kakashi looked her straight in the eyes for a moment, his expression inscrutable. Apparently finding her sincere enough, he gave a curt nod and started his story again.

"When I was a young child I was deathly afraid of old people so I-"

"Sssen-ssei." Sakura growled, "You said before that you were afraid of the dark, not old people!"

The Copy-ninja blinked in surprise, "Oh..." he visibly straightened, "Well to be honest I was afraid of both."

Sakura sighed, exasperated, shaking her head, "Fine. Tell me why you were afraid of the dark."

"Hmmm," He looked somewhere over her shoulder, "Whenever I saw my next door neighbor I would immediately fall to the ground, no matter where I was. You see, when I first met her that old lady pinched my cheeks so hard that it caused nerve damage, resulting in the temporary paralysis of my legs. And then, whenever I saw her, my cheeks would remember what happened and start to hurt and then my legs would get all tingly and stop working. It got to be so bad that-"

"She pinched a nerve?" Sakura deadpanned.

"Yes." Kakashi nodded solemly.

"In...your cheek?" She raised an eyebrow.

"My face cheek." he clarified.

"That temporarily caused your legs to go numb and fall out from under you?"

"Every single time." He shook his head sadly.

"Sensei?"

"Hmm?" He looked up curiously.

"Have you ever considered getting help?"

Kakashi frowned, "What are you trying to say?" There was an awkward silence.

"Sensei?" she asked again. He tilted his head towards her questioningly.

"...Thanks." She smiled up at him, "I don't think I feel as cold as before."

Kakashi looked down at her warmly and smiled. She could tell it was a real smile because his dark eye glittered and curved happily. Sakura, despite the freezing circumstances, felt safe and loved.

* * *

…

_And the award for the most awkwardly endearing, unintentionally humorous comfort scene goes to… Kakashi Hatake! _

_Haha, _I'm_ not even sure exactly what was going through his head when I wrote that. I still can't decide if he was being serious or if he was trying to be funny :P_

_Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Thank you for reading! And please take the time to review!_

_~Flinty_

…


	5. Chapter 5

"Captain Yamato, my radio isn't working." Chouji shook his headset experimentally, "All I hear is static."

"Me too taichou," Ino landed lightly next to the leader of Team Two, "I thought you said that these didn't need to be recharged?"

Yamato glanced over at Shikamaru who had pulled his headset to rest around his neck. _Guess that makes the four of us._ He slunk into a crouch, resting his fingertips gently on the bark of the branch he was perched on. Closing his eyes, he focused on every vibration reverberating through the thick trunk of the tree. _Nothing but the normal wildlife, _He mused. _So, we aren't being attacked_. He straightened, trailing his fingers unconsciously along the moss covered tree trunk as he stood.

"Ino, use your mind-body-switch-jutsu to check up on the camp."

"Okay." She nodded, her long blonde hair swishing with the movement. Shikamaru and Chouji dutifully positioned themselves on either side of her. Not two seconds after the girl collapsed into their arms, a small bird flitted purposefully through the assorted shinobi towards the hidden base.

"She'll be back in about ten minutes," Shikamaru sighed, helping Chouji prop their blonde teammate against the trunk of the tree.

Yamato nodded distractedly, already lost in his thoughts. _There's no reason why the radios shouldn't be working, we tested them all before we left. _He frowned slightly. _If they really are malfunctioning, what are the chances that all four of them would act up at the same time? _He yanked out his earpiece, _And, we wouldn't be hearing this static. If the radios were broken, they just wouldn't work. There must be something else going on here. _

As they waited for Ino to come back silence settled softly around them. The only noise was the occasional rustle of leaves, the sunlight casting dappled shadows that quivered with the wind. As tranquil as the forest was, Yamato felt a tingle of dread prickle through him. It was an uncomfortable, but distinctive feeling that he knew all to well. He hadn't felt it since his ANBU days, which, to be honest, weren't that far behind him.

Whenever something bad was about to happen he would get this feeling. And it had never been wrong. His little sixth sense had become something like a commodity for his ANBU team, they had half-teasingly insisted that he check it before every mission. One time, when he had felt particularly apprehensive, his team had gone so far as to try to switch missions with another team.

Yamato remembered regretfully how they had been sent out regardless and lost two of their own.

Most of the time it was just a small feeling that kept him on his toes, preventing any accidents or miscalculations that could prove fatal. But this felt different. Yamato checked his watch, forgetting the time as soon as he looked away. He could sense something big pressing down on them--a dark, colossal feeling that was strangely malignant and wicked. He picked up a leaf and twirled the stem idly to preoccupy himself. _I hope Kakashi-senpai and his team are okay._

"Shit!" Ino sat up suddenly, slamming her fists angrily into the wood beneath her, "They've been found out!" She jerked herself to her feet, stumbling against Shikamaru as she adjusted to being back in her real body.

_I hate being right...This must be what I was worrying about._

"Calm down, Ino," Shikamaru gently pushed down the girl's tense shoulders, "What do you mean, 'They've been found out'?"

Never one to be babied, Ino slapped his hands away, "I mean they've been freaking found out! They're all handcuffed and being guarded in the middle of the camp! Stupid Sakura, how could she--"

"Is anyone hurt?" Yamato interrupted what was sure to be a passionate rant.

"No," Ino seemed to calm down a little at this. Her stormy blue eyes cleared a little, "No, they seemed fine. Nothing but a couple of bruises. Although..." She paused, smirking, "Kakashi-sensei looked a little red when they stabbed a kunai through his book."

Yamato chuckled. _That sounds just like senpai. But it isn't like him to get captured... maybe something big really is going on here. _He looked at Ino's unusually worried expression, at Shikamaru's preoccupied look, and at Chouji's nervous chewing of a protein bar. _It might be nothing..._

_But something tells me we need to get them out of there as soon as possible._

"They know we're here." Shikamaru's calm statement startled his teammates out of their reveries, "They must have suspected that there was a backup team and disrupted our radio transmissions." He looked up, solemnly, to Yamato. "That means that they are prepared for an attack."

The wood-jutsu specialist took a deep breath, reflexively pushing down any worries or fears that could cloud his thinking. "So, what do you propose we do?"

"Obvious." Shikamaru smirked, "We attack."

* * *

Was it possible to get frostbite when there wasn't any frost?

Kakashi contemplated this as he methodically attempted to wiggle each of his toes, checking for signs of life. _Toe number four of the left foot is a negative, _he squinted in concentration, _Toe number five of the left foot is immobile as well. _

He bowed his head sadly, mourning for the loss of his left foot.

Who would have known that betting his shoe in a card game would result in the amputation of his entire left leg? Granted that hadn't happened yet... but Kakashi was sure that if his foot remained unclothed for much longer in the cold, wet grass then it would surely die of exposure. His foot was more timid and bashful than the normal appendage, and to be left bare and vulnerable to the elements was a traumatic experience at best. As it was, his leg was so attached to his foot that Kakashi was sure that it would follow soon after, leaving him to hobble around with only his right leg to support him.

His enemies would never take him seriously.

Which was just as well, Kakashi had secretly trained himself in the sacred ninja art of fighting with crutches when he was eighteen and had fractured his pelvis. He had also vowed to never again go with Gai to a karaoke bar, but that was besides the point.

_Well isn't that a cute picture?_ Kakashi huffed, eyeing the picture of coziness and contentment before him.

He wasn't in the least bit feeling left out or jealous of his subordinate's collective warm and toasty dog-pile. No, he was just entertaining himself with how every time he breathed he could see a swirling vapor of mist. Quite amusing really, the discovery that the temperature had dropped to such a degree that his mask no longer inhibited the visibility of his breath expelled through chattering teeth. Amusing in much the same way as that time when Kakashi had been required to shadow Ibiki Morino for a two week period upon his entrance into ANBU. _Gah, _Kakashi moaned, _I will never look at tissues the same way again..._

Was it just him or were there actual heat waves rising up from their heaped figures?

Kakashi shivered and stared balefully at his entangled students. But, at the sight of their peaceful faces, Kakashi found that he couldn't maintain his resentful expression for very long. His pout unconsciously slipped into a small smile. _Naruto. Sakura. Sai...Sasuke._ Despite his best efforts, he had grown attached to them. This thought sent a wild flutter of unease through him, a reflexive reaction.

But this sudden feeling, (he wouldn't admit it was a fear), was eclipsed by another, much darker, worry. He had come terrifyingly close to losing them all today. Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut at the too vivid image of red blood dribbling out of his students necks.

_They aren't your students anymore, _Kakashi distracted himself. _And Sai never actually was your student!_ A different type of shudder jittered through him--_Thank god for that._

He often looked back on the early days of Team Seven as one might fondly recall a two week period spent in one of Mist Country's interrogation facilities during the Third Great Ninja War. _Ah, those were memorable times,_ Kakashi threw up a little in his mouth, _I'll never find out whose socks those were... _

Throwing Sai into the picture would be just like throwing Gai into that four day solitary confinement those Mist Nin had tried. The result would be absolutely horrific--People all over the world would commemorate--

The sudden feel of smooth wood wrapping around his jaw, covering his mouth, made Kakashi flinch so badly there was an audible thump when he fell back to the ground. He swallowed a curse. _I really need to talk to Tenzou about his tactics, there's a thin line between being efficient and being creepy. _Kakashi frowned, realizing his friend had crossed that line a long time ago.

There was a sharp pressure on his wrists as thin slivers of wood wound sinuously between the links of his handcuffs. There was an ominous moments hesitation before the strands thickened and twisted. Kakashi's eyes watered. Not wanting to lose his hands in addition to his soon-to-be-departing leg, Kakashi forced his hands to relax. The pressure increased to an unbearable degree and his wrists blistered with pain.

Sometimes! Sometimes Kakashi would pick dandelions and pinch the stem right under the bud, causing the head of the flower to pop off. He had always thought it comical and morbidly entertaining. But now, now the image of his hands popping off his wrists cruelly tainted the pastime. _I swear, _Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut in agony, _I swear that I will never decapitate pretty weeds for my own amusement ever again!_

The pressure suddenly stopped. Cool relief washed over him as the wood withdrew. Kakashi's hands throbbed hotly and he found himself mourning for the loss of his arms as well. How would he fight with just one leg? His only option was to acquire a very pointy hat and attempt to impale his attackers with it. Kakashi sniffed regretfully. In order to become adequately proficient in the art of sparring with only his head he would have to develop grotesquely bulky neck muscles. This would eventually call for a complete alteration of his wardrobe, he didn't have any--The sound of splintering wood behind him jolted Kakashi back to the situation at hand.

Unable to twist his head because of the wood locking his chin in place, his eyes slid over to peer apprehensively over his shoulder. _He's probably rethinking his strategy for getting these chakra repressing handcuffs off. Thank god._

The sight of ten poised tendrils of wood merging together to form two hands near the vicinity of his ass made his eyes widen.

"Shet! Tnzzuh!" His voice was muffled by the wood wrapped around his face like a scarf. _Definitely crossed into the creepy zone! I always thought he might be--The wooden hands cleanly broke apart the manacles binding his wrists together._

Kakashi visibly deflated with relief as the wood retracted from his face and wrists. He watched as his students--_subordinates!_--underwent the same process. It did not escape his notice that the removal of handcuffs went a lot smoother for them than it did for him. Tenzou had clearly used Kakashi as a unintentional guinea pig to determine the best strategy.

Kakashi didn't hold it against him, the former ANBU operative had been a guinea pig himself since birth.

The Copy Nin swiftly rolled over into a crouch and readied himself for whatever ambush Tenzou had planned. He was sure that it would come quickly, and he didn't want to be left out of the action. Kakashi grinned wolfishly beneath his mask and bounced on the balls of his feet eagerly.

_That fat man who stabbed a kunai through my Icha Icha is going to learn the definition of karma, _his eyes narrowed wickedly, _A chidori through the chest should suffice._

* * *

_Kakashi really is a quirky guy, isn't he? _

_I really enjoy writing from his point of view :) Anyway, thank you for reading this chapter! I hope that you enjoyed it and continue to stick with me as I carve out this story. If anyone has any questions or suggestions please review, I'm not the most experienced writer and would greatly appreciate hearing your opinion. To those of you who have given me reviews I just wanted to say that I am so totally blown away by how sweet you all are! It's really encouraging to hear from you guys, especially from those of you who write amazing fanfiction! Yeah, I'm just a grateful little bugger lol._

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	6. Chapter 6

"Oi! What do you think you're doing?" One of the guards snarled, swinging his broadsword to point accusingly towards the prisoners. Who, incidentally, weren't really prisoners anymore. Sakura smiled.

There was a hurried frenzy of movement as tent flaps were swished open and men rushed out into the clearing. Alarmed shouts and yells echoed in the cool dawn of morning, the sight of four unrestrained Konoha ninja standing in the middle of the camp catalyzing a minor panic.

Sakura allowed herself a smirk, finding some perverse enjoyment in how the rogue ninja scurried about the camp fearfully. She cracked her knuckles. They would pay for their overly zealous interrogation tactics. _I'll show them to hit a lady... _She grinned sweetly at a man who was stumbling nervously across her field of vision. He dropped his thick, metal shield on his foot with a yelp.

_I think I'll punch his head off, _she decided, feeling generous. A_nd then I'll kick that guy with the unibrow in the balls!_ An immense amount of chakra thrummed through her arm and collected in her tiny fist. She couldn't fully repress the thrilled giggle at the intoxicating rush of power.

And then she was sprinting forwards, her fist clenched tightly and raised high above her head. Roaring with a pent-up righteous fury that could rival Tsunade's, she startled her prey into fear induced paralysis. So intent on creating a human pancake was she that, absorbed in the throes of divine retribution, Kakashi's warning cry fell on deaf ears.

A split second before her fist connected with the horrified face of a man about to die a very violent death--a spiky human boulder tumbled forcefully from the sky and crushed him into the earth.

Sakura had just enough time to redirect her momentum and swing into a clownish pirouette. She twisted away jerkily, stumbling backwards. Naruto caught her under the arms. Dirt sprayed into the cool morning air and the ground rumbled at the impact. It was tremendous in every sense of the word.

Sakura quickly disentangled herself from Naruto's possessive hold. The Jinchuriki smirked, clearly pleased with his timely and valiant rescue.

"Chouji!" Sakura stifled the urge to smack the smugness off of her teammate's whiskered face, "A little warning next time please!" Kakashi sighed in exasperation behind her, his energetic stance faltering for a moment.

"Sorry, Sakura." Chouji's eyes squinted as he smiled apologetically at her, his round cheeks dimpling. He reached into his pack and swiftly tossed a kunai to each of them, stepping seamlessly into their formation. The five of them stood with their backs to each other in various stances, ready to spring at a moments notice.

During the few seconds it took for them to get organized, the rogue ninja had surrounded them completely. In the grey light of the coming morning everything looked fuzzy and soft except--

Sakura's green eyes widened at the sight of a hundred razor-sharp arrow heads, dripping with black beads of moisture, facing them on all sides. She felt Naruto shift beside her.

"Stop!" She put her arm out in front of him, "Nobody move! Those arrows are dipped in poison!" _If they so much as scratch us we'll be in trouble--I haven't stolen any antidotes yet!_

"Smart girl," A deep voice chuckled, "She's right. One move and you're done."

Everybody's eyes shifted to see a tall man push his way through the ranks. He wore a sleeveless vest that was left unbuttoned, the scarlet and gold designs accenting the bulky muscles that rippled powerfully beneath his tanned skin. Dark, billowy pants were tucked into a thick, decorated belt and shin-length black boots. His long black hair was twisted into snarled dreadlocks that swirled about him as if he were moving through water. Jagged pieces of glass and metal were woven sporadically into the strands, glinting and clinking with each heavy step that he took. Sakura squinted and, in the thin light of the approaching dawn, she could see that the shards of glass and metal were glossed with a thin layer of some slick green substance. _Poison!_ She tightened her grip on her kunai, _The man went and turned himself into a poisonous porcupine!_

She opened her mouth to warn the others but was shocked into silence when one of the archers shot the tall porcupine man straight in the foot. There was a collective gasp of horror and all of the bows went slack for a moment. The shock and horror of one of their own randomly attacking their leader muddled the rogue ninjas' movements. _That's gotta be Ino and her mind-body-transfer jutsu!_

Before Sakura could even blink, thick wooden walls erupted violently from the ground around the camp. There were screams of pain and surprise as the wood corkscrewed wildly to the treetops, fencing everyone in. The towering walls cast a ring-shaped shadow that encircled the five Konoha ninja. Sakura glanced warily at the startled faces of her teammates, their expressions illuminated softly in the thin light of morning.

"What are you doing?!" Hijame bellowed, his barbed hair swinging wildly in his rage, "Shoot them!"

There was a moments hesitation and confusion before the rogue ninja starting yanking back on their bowstrings. The jagged tips of countless arrows pointed at the tense knot of Konoha ninja standing in the impromptu spotlight.

Sakura flinched but no arrows came.

All of the warriors were frozen in various poses, caught mid-action. Shadows writhed like snakes about their feet. _Shikamaru! _Sakura grinned at the confused and furious expressions contorting the rogue ninjas' faces as they struggled against their invisible bonds.

Exploding tags attached to kunai were thrown into the disheveled ranks of rogue ninja. Small explosions and clouds of dust and grit filled the air. Water was sprayed into the sporadic fiery explosions, maintaining an effective smog. Sakura blinked as her vision was obscured--she couldn't even see Naruto standing right beside her! _Now what am I supposed to do?_

A hand fell heavily on her shoulder from behind.

Sakura gasped in surprise and, out of reflex, jabbed her elbow backwards sharply. There was a muffled 'Oomph!' from her attacker as her elbow connected with a hard chest. Never one to be taken advantage of, Sakura swung her leg blindly in a powerful roundhouse kick. She reeled, off-balance, when her foot met with empty air. Suspecting that her opponent had crouched, preparing to spring at her, Sakura fell into a crouch herself. Her suspicions were verified as a sandaled foot caught on her side, the taller body of her attacker tumbling clumsily to the ground as he tripped over her. Through the clearing dust she could make out his slender form sprawled unceremoniously on the ground before her. She smirked, gathering chakra into her fist, _I'll teach him to sneak up on me like that!_

As the murky form of her opponent quickly rolled and executed a tight backflip, Sakura felt a tingle of trepidation. He looked fast. He landed in a catlike crouch that was so graceful it was almost sensual. Sakura steeled herself.

She started swinging her chakra-strengthened fist the second he sprung forwards.

Just as a pair of hard, thin arms encircled her waist, her fist came into contact with a silvery white crown. She heard a noticeable crack as his neck snapped sideways and felt the reverberations echo up her forearm. The force of her blow sent her attacker flying to the side, but she was dragged with him. His arms were hugging her tightly. Sakura shrieked in surprise as the world spun around her, a dizzying kaleidoscope of dust and grey predawn light.

She made a small sound as all of the air rushed out of her lungs when a limp body landed heavily on her, pressing her into the dirt. Sakura lay still for a moment, beneath him, and just tried to breathe. As soon as she got half a breath of oxygen she started struggling, pushing the unwelcome weight away furiously. This had gone on long enough. Sakura felt her anger rising to a dangerous level.

All of a sudden her abductor squeezed her tightly to his chest. Sakura shrieked. _I thought that he was dead!_ Her face was forcefully buried in the crook of his neck. A familiar, deliciously masculine smell flooded her nostrils as her nose rubbed against his collarbone. But this just made her angrier.

She clawed at him, struggling. He clumsily yanked them both into a standing position, weaving dizzily. Sakura took full advantage of this momentary lapse. She snarled angrily as she drove her knee into his crotch.

The reaction was instantaneous and gratifying.

He cried out loudly, a surprised and unguarded yelp that was a couple octaves higher than normal male speech patterns. Sakura had to take a step back as he tremulously collapsed against her, his legs giving out. Mind muddled with pain, he clung to her desperately, unable to make the distinction between friend or foe. He panted, fingers fisting in the back of her shirt, and tearfully buried his face in her neck.

Sakura smirked evilly. She had not been conservative with the amount of chakra used.

Sakura briskly shoved him off her. He stumbled back into Yamato's wooden wall and slid haltingly to the ground, hands between his trembling legs. _That felt good_, Sakura smiled to herself at the satisfying sight.

She quickly turned away from his hazy outline--_I need to find the rest of my team! _She took a few hesitant steps forward through the cloudy fog. _If I could just see! _Another round of exploding tags erupted around her, and she felt a thin spray of moisture dust over her. The dispersing fog was renewed. _Crap, where are they?_

"D-Dammit Sakura," a deep voice stuttered angrily in her ear, making her jump. _What--Who?_

A gloved hand squeezed her wrist and she was jerked around. She gasped in surprise. The masked face of her sensei swam nebulously through the mist, millimeters from her own. He was frowning.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura tightly hugged the older man's rigid frame, melting a little with relief, "I'm so glad you found me! Some creep wouldn't stop attacking me and I couldn't find you guys!" The words spilled out of her and she squeezed him like a big teddy bear, "But I kicked him in the balls, sensei, just like you told me I should if some guy gets too grabby! I don't think he'll be having kids anytime--"

"I wasn't attacking you..." He muttered weakly.

Sakura froze in the middle of rocking him back and forth. Her eyes snapped open in horror.

_Ohhh shiiiit._

"Oh shit."

He coughed awkwardly. Sakura quickly released him, mortified. Her mouth opened and closed in wordless horror.

"Just," he paused and Sakura noticed that he appeared to be having some trouble straightening his right leg, "C'mon." he growled.

Sakura let him drag her by the wrist back to the wooden wall and she followed him up it. Their ascension wasn't very fast. Their progress, to her utter chagrin, was impeded by his slight limp and inability to walk in a straight line.

After an eternity of awkwardly stubborn navigation, they leapt from the top of the wall to the large tree branches below. Sakura landed lightly. Kakashi had to use her arm to balance himself, his other was pin-wheeling sluggishly in an attempt to remain upright.

"There you are!" Her head snapped up to see Captain Yamato perched on a branch above them, "What took you guys so long?" He tilted his head to the side when he asked this and the motion reminded Sakura of a bird.

"Uhmm..." Sakura's eyes widened.

"I uh," Kakashi wheezed slightly, bending forwards with his hands on his knees, "She..." Words seemed to escape him as he let out a strangled groan and fell to his knees, "Ow..."

Sakura quickly stepped in front of him, "Heh heh heh." Sai and Naruto leapt up to stand next to Yamato, joining the already too crowded scene. Naruto's blue eyes widened at the sight of his former sensei attempting to fold himself in half.

"Hey! What happened to Kaka-sensei?" He demanded.

"Nothing!" Sakura looked at them wide-eyed. Naruto's eyes narrowed suspiciously and Yamato blinked. Sai frowned thoughtfully.

"Why are his hands down his pants? Did he hurt his penis?"

"SAI!!!"

"I told you to stop talking about that!" Naruto bopped the confused boy on the head, grinding his teeth together. Yamato sighed a very exasperated sigh and looked to the heavens for patience. Chouji suddenly leapt up next to Sakura and Kakashi, carrying Ino's limp body bridal-style.

"Alright!" Yamato cut Chouji off before he could ask anything," Shikamaru's jutsu won't last much longer so we have to leave now. Naruto," he turned to the hyperactive blonde, "Stay behind with him until his jutsu wears off. He'll lead you to the designated meeting point. Chouji, travel a little slower than the rest of us, Ino needs time to catch up with her body. Everyone else, let's head out!" He turned to go, but seemed to reconsider and looked back over his shoulder darkly.

"Sakura. You'll need to help Kakashi-senpai."

Everyone leapt away, Naruto towards Shikamaru's crouched form a couple of branches over, and the rest into the surrounding forest. Sakura stiffened as she suddenly became aware that the background noise of various moans had ceased. Her neck prickled and she felt someone's cold glare stabbing her in the back. She hesitantly turned her neck to look behind her.

Kakashi was pouting down at her, having stood up at some point during Yamato's orders. His lanky arms were hugging his bruised skull childishly and one of his legs was slightly bent and crossed over the other. His grey eye narrowed frostily.

"...Heh heh...heh," She laughed nervously, "Sorry sensei." He glared. Sakura tentatively reached out to tousle his hair in an intended gesture of apology. The silvery white locks were adorably ruffled, some parts fluffing up through his fingers and arms while the majority retained the intended smooth, glossy look.

Her hand was smacked away so fast that she couldn't see it.

He sniffed haughtily and looked away from her, dismissive. Sakura's eyes widened at the out-of-character disdainfulness. Kakashi sedately lowered his arms to his sides in an attempt to keep his dignity intact. There was a taut silence between them. Sakura's grin felt strangely lopsided.

The strained moment was cut short, his single eye flickering conspirationally back to hers. He smiled and his shoulders shook silently with repressed laughter. A loud giggle spilled out of Sakura and Kakashi shook his head.

"Tsunade's taught you well..."

"Heh heh...yeah."

* * *

_Sorry for the long delay! Research papers are nasty little buggers they are._

_So here's chapter 6! I'm trying to stuff in as much humor as I can before things start getting rough :/ heh. I might be lowering the rating, depending upon the outcome of some future chapters but who knows. _

_On a side note, some of you might be wondering about Kakashi's personality, especially in the last chapter. He's a little distracted. I did this on purpose, there's a reason why he always seems to be changing his focus. I'm not going to tell you why right here, you'll have to keep reading to find out, but I will tell you this. I didn't write him as a strangely distracted person because I think that is how he thinks or how he is. That was mostly for just that particular uncomfortable situation, to show how he reacted to it._

_Alright! I've probably given enough away lol. Anyway, thank you for reading! Please review and tell me what you think._

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	7. Chapter 7

"He still hasn't taken off that freaky costume..." Naruto peered suspiciously over his shoulder at Sai.

The artist struggled to lie down on his bedroll, his limbs becoming hopelessly entangled within the generous folds of his cloak. After a minute of valiant wriggling and controlled rocking from side to side, Sai appeared to give up. With only one hand free of the knotted shroud and both of his legs twisted together, it couldn't have been very comfortable. The boy began to stroke the limp beard pooled across his chest.

"I think he's grown attached to it." Sakura's voice was a horrified whisper.

Naruto shuddered and turned back to the dying campfire. He was glad that Ino and Chouji were making such a loud ruckus as they set up their respective nests. Their squabbling drowned out Sai's droning murmurs. Naruto cringed, the last thing he needed on a dark night like this was to hear the artist's emotionless voice whispering affectionate reassurances to inanimate objects as he tried to fall asleep... _Maybe Sai took one-to-many hits to the head during our interrogation_...

"Don't talk about things like that at night, Sakura-chan," he whined, "I'll have nightmares."

She laughed at his pleading tone and dragged her bedroll over, flopping down next to him with a contented sigh. Naruto quickly buried his smile in the cushiony mat. _Yes! Sakura-chan wants to sleep next to me! Again! _Nevermind the fact that her choices for a sleep-mate were limited to Chouji, Ino, Sai, and himself--it was destiny!

A moment passed in which Naruto twitched under the strain of containing his happy dance to his mind and Sakura pretended to be oblivious.

The four of them had been ordered to set up camp and get as much sleep as they could with Yamato taking watch. As soon as they had all arrived at the meeting place Shikamaru had suggested another plan to steal the rogue-ninjas' poisons and antidotes. Apparently it was just too dangerous to leave the situation as it was. Naruto thought that was just a fancy way of saying that if they went back to Konoha now Tsunade would rip off their heads. So yeah, failure was not an option.

Shikamaru's plan was to have the majority of the two teams rest up during the night so that they were ready for any possible attacks that might come the following morning. While they were sleeping, or in Naruto's case _snoring_, as Sakura had helpfully pointed out, Kakashi and himself would sneak back into the rogue-ninja camp. The Shadow-user and the former ANBU would break into the supply tent, steal everything that looked important, and then slip out of the camp without being detected.

Naruto didn't see why they had to everything so sneaky-like! He was all for jumping into the enemy camp, rasengan in hand, and kicking some ass! Honestly, his plan was a lot simpler... But whatever, he didn't mind getting more sleep time.

Sakura picked at some lint contemplatively. She sighed.

"Naruto?"

"Yah?" He perked his head up, frowning a little at her brooding tone.

"Do you think that Kakashi-sensei is..." she paused uncertainly, her green eyes flickering over his expression, "Do you think he's losing his touch?" Her words came out rushed.

"Sakura-chan!"

"I know, nevermind." She blushed a little and her mouth pursed guiltily, "Forget I said anything." She quickly flipped over so that her back was facing him. Naruto blinked slowly. He absentmindedly fingered the worn threads on his bedroll, a sliver of doubt bothering him.

_Of course_ he had defended the Copy-ninja. Kakashi? Losing his touch?--Ridiculous! There was no way that would _ever_ happen, there was just no way. Naruto knew that whenever Kakashi fought it was an awe-inspiring sight, he had seen it himself countless times. In a battle, the man was confidence personified. Every movement was laced with a predatory elegance that was simply chilling to behold.

But...

His former teacher hadn't fought _at all_ when they were caught. There had been no showy jutsus--there hadn't even been a secret backup plan! Kakashi had simply kneeled before the enemy and dropped his weapon. Naruto struggled desperately to repress the feeling of doubt worming it's way through his chest.

_Why would he do that?_

"No, I..." Naruto whispered reluctantly, "I know what you mean." Sakura rolled back over slowly and her green eyes fixed expectantly upon his own. The Jinchuriki pulled the blanket up to his chin uneasily, he couldn't help but feel like he was betraying his former sensei.

"When he just gave up like that yesterday," Naruto made an uncomfortable face, "I don't know, I just couldn't believe it... It made me feel kinda sick."

Sakura nodded quickly, looking slightly relieved, "Me too! Why didn't he do anything? I just don't understand." She paused and shook her head a little, blinking hard, "He could've at least left and come back for us later! But all he did was drop his weapons and get tied up with us! At first I thought it was all part of some big plan--But he never did anything! I just don't get it! He said that his teammates were the most important thing to him--and he didn't even try to do _anything_!" Sakura frowned fiercely, something that Naruto had noticed she did when she didn't want to look upset.

"I just don't understand..." she trailed off, looking very tired all of a sudden. Sakura's eyes raised to meet his and Naruto saw the confusion and worry she tried to hide within those green orbs.

Unable to see her upset, Naruto smiled brightly and joked, "He was probably just lulling them into a false sense of security, Sakura-chan! You know how he is!"

"Yeah right, Naruto!" Sakura easily fell into their familiar banter, "He was probably just being lazy!" Naruto chuckled and snuggled into his blankets. Kakashi was one of the laziest people he knew, second only to Shikamaru. The idea that he would rather hand himself over than execute an elaborate escape plan was really not that far fetched.

Sakura yawned and stretched, indicating that she was satisfied with their conversation and wanted to sleep now. He smiled as she mumbled a sleepy goodnight, her eyes already closing, and rolled over so that her back was facing him. Naruto watched her shoulders rise and fall for a moment, happy that he was able to reassure her somewhat.

The night grew still and quiet around them. Naruto looked away from his teammate and into the surrounding forest where Yamato was keeping watch. As the last embers of the fire sputtered and faded into darkness he felt an acute loneliness echo within his chest. As stupid as it was, Naruto couldn't help but wish that Kakashi was with them now.

* * *

"Are you _sure_ this is how they do it in ANBU?"

Shikamaru grunted and readjusted his grip on the older man's feet, pointedly ignoring the fact that only one wore a boot. Kakashi made no reply. The faint tinkling sound of jostled glass continued without pause. Shikamaru gritted his teeth.

For the last twelve minutes he had been in possibly one of the most uncomfortable and awkward positions of his life. With the intention of giving his fellow jounin a boost, Shikamaru found himself backed up against one of the supply racks, his sweating hands cupped around Kakashi's bony heels and his head buried somewhere between the man's knees.

Needless to say there was a lot he didn't understand about their current situation.

For one, if either of them were to give the other a boost, why was it that the smaller, less muscular, of the two was the one doing the lifting? He had never really took Kakashi Hatake to be a cruel man, but given the present circumstances he might just have to reevaluate that opinion. Secondly, how long could it really take to collect all of the poisons and antidotes on the upper shelf? In all honesty, it should not have taken more than a couple seconds! And thirdly--why was his head in Kakashi's crotch of all places?!

Shikamaru jumped at the sound of approaching footsteps. _Shit!_ The Shadow-user forcefully nudged Kakashi's inner thigh with his nose, afraid to speak and unable to move his hands. No response from the otherwise occupied Copy-cat ninja.

The footfalls were getting closer, any second now and they would be found out. Shikamaru's mind raced, trying to think of a way to get the Copy-nin's attention without making any noise that could give them away. The muffled sound of approaching laughter spilled over them in the darkness. Shikamaru's heart beat in his ears. He did the only thing he could think of.

He bit him.

Kakashi spasmed suddenly and violently, his body twisting and thrashing. Shikamaru struggled to keep him aloft, caught off guard by the unexpected ferocity of his teammate's movements. For a split second he found himself trying to juggle the Copy-ninja's kicking feet while he was battered in the head by what felt like their half-filled bag.

The opening to the supply tent was brushed aside and a bright light illuminated them just as Shikamaru missed catching Kakashi's foot. The two rogue-ninja gasped in shock and disgust at the sight that greeted them. The famous Copy-ninja was frozen in the action of straddling the shoulders of a younger man, whose hands seemed to be in the middle of groping his buttocks.

"What the hell?! What--"

The next moment there were two guards lying on the ground with shurikan jutting out of their sluggishly bleeding necks.

The two of them quickly disentangled themselves, after much shoving and grumbled curses. They stared at each other in mortification, breathing hard.

"Gah!" Kakashi cried, stumbling backwards.

"Augh!" Shikamaru cried, looking at his hands in horror.

"_Why_ would you--"

"They were going to--"

"You, you--"

"FIND US!" They both flinched at the loud sound of Shikamaru's shout. There was a tense moment of silence where they listened for any indication that they'd been heard. There was nothing.

"You _bit_ me!" Kakashi accused in a disbelieving whisper. Shikamaru rolled his eyes and rubbed a hand over his weary face. _I just _had_ to be a ninja..._

"Look," he sighed, reluctantly playing the adult in this situation, "Let's just--"

"Forget this ever happened."

"...Yes."

The two of them sat in silence, Shikamaru rubbing his hands in an unconscious washing motion while Kakashi ran a hand through his silver hair. The camp was perfectly silent, there was only the sound of nocturnal wildlife and the wind whistling through the tents. The flapping sound of tent entrances billowing open and closed...

Kakashi seemed to realize it at the same moment that he did. They both stood up, Shikamaru snatching up the dying torch, and ripped open the tent flap. The camp was deserted.

_I have a bad feeling about this..._

_

* * *

_

_Sorry it's been so long since I've updated! _

_I've had really intense track practice/meets, choir competitions, college choosing, research project crap! Ugh, my cup doth runneth over. Anyway, thankyou for reading! I'm sorry that this one's so short and kinda dumb, it'll get better after this. If you're reading, please please review! I will love you forever!_

_But yeah, incase anyone is confused, the camp that they snuck into was abandoned. And they just noticed. So if the rogue-ninja aren't at their camp, where are they? Cookie for anyone who guesses right :D_

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	8. Chapter 8

"Looks like they didn't leave that long ago..."

Shikamaru brushed aside another tent flap, frowning when he was met with the same hastily abandoned scene. Clothes were scattered on the carpet floor as if someone had been changing in a hurry, various light fixtures had been left on, and a game of cards was discarded on a small circular table--there was even a half-eaten cup of ramen steaming slowly on a desk.

The enemy ninja must have all left when they were busy plundering the supply tent.

A million questions whizzed through his analytical mind at a pace that would incapacitate most people. Had the rogue-ninja been aware of their infiltration? If so, why didn't they apprehend them? Where had they gone? Why?

Almost as soon as he thought of the questions he thought of the answers.

No, they couldn't have known that Kakashi and himself had snuck into their camp, the two guards who had stumbled upon them had been a little too shocked. The Shadow-user told himself it had absolutely nothing to do with the incriminating position they had been in upon discovery. They must have gone somewhere relatively close by because they left the majority of their belongings behind them, and that's just not how you survive as a nomad. They had left in a great hurry, some new information must have made them change their plans.

All of this went through his mind within the time it took for him to blink, drop the tent flap, and walk back over to where Kakashi was standing in the middle of the encampment.

The thin, white light of the stars and moon filtered eerily through the pockmarked wooden walls Yamato had erected earlier. It cast a dappled shadow upon Kakashi's lean frame, illuminating patches of his head and shoulders in an ethereal glow. Shikamaru cast a speculative eye over his teammate.

Kakashi was all angles, his shoulders hunched, he rested his head forwards against the palm of his hand, fingers on his other hand curling around his elbow in a tight grip. Every outline of his musculature was brought into sharp relief as the man breathed slowly in and out, the slightest movement seemed profound in contrast to the tense stillness of his body. Shikamaru frowned. If he didn't know better he would think the Copy-nin looked... upset? nervous? worried?

He couldn't determine exactly how he looked, but it didn't look Hatake-esque. The Shadow-user felt an unfamiliar cold heaviness coil in the pit of his stomach as he looked at the older jounin. Something wasn't right here...

"We're going back." Kakashi's voice sounded strained.

Before Shikamaru could say anything, Kakashi had sped forwards and was scaling the cratered surface of the wooden barrier. After a split-second's deliberation, he snatched up their bag of stolen elixirs and sprinted after him.

* * *

Yamato shifted uncomfortably, his self-imposed perch seemed to have transformed into a self-imposed punishment. _I guess that's what happens when you volunteer to take the entire night shift on all by your lonesome. _He sighed. _Why do I do these things to myself?_

The mental images of Naruto's comically exaggerated pleading face, Sakura's tearfully hopeful eyes, Sai's blandly unfocused expression, Ino's "I'm about to whine your ears off" look, and Chouji's lackluster nibbling of a candy bar bombarded him.

_Oh...that's why..._

He mindlessly shredded a leaf into lots of tiny, tiny bits, letting them sprinkle through his fingers to the forest floor below. Well, it's not like he really minded really. He would actually be more uncomfortable if one of them had taken up guard duty and fallen asleep.

Yamato snorted. _Yeah, uncomfortable as in quite possibly speared through by one of those poisoned arrows those extravagant vagabonds were using. _He forced his stiff muscles to transition from an awkward lounge into a relaxed crouch. Just the thought of being taken by surprise unsettled him and he habitually focused his mind on his surroundings.

High in the upper boughs of a towering tree, the expansive sea of silvery leaves swaying peacefully around him, he was in the perfect position. At one side there was the clearing, a nondescript little stretch of lush grass and pearly mushrooms that was fenced in by the looming trunks of wooden giants. The perfect spot to hide away from any possible pursuers and catch up on sleep. And with just a turn of his head, Yamato could scan the expanse of the forest. To be honest, he was actually quite in his element. Even in the pitch black of midnight, there wasn't anyone who could take him by surprise when he was in a forest. This had been proven countless times.

... So why was it that he just couldn't shake off this dark feeling of dread? He thought that it would have left by now--the worst had already happened, hadn't it? Kakashi and his team had been discovered and they had all failed the mission.

But Yamato knew better. If he was still haunted by this inexpressible feeling of heaviness and trepidation then the worst hadn't happened yet.

He pursed his lips and scratched behind the lower left side of his face-plate distractedly. _I just know I'm not going to get a moment's true peace until it happens, all this waiting around is making me nervous. _

He scanned the scenery thoroughly, listening intently for any possible--What was that?

Yamato squinted his eyes, eyebrows furrowing slightly in confusion. What was that light far over there? There was a tiny flicker of brightness twinkling teasingly between visibility and invisibility over in the lower left corner of his vision. He debated whether he should abandon his post to go check it out or not. The mental debate lasted for a couple of minutes, this new uncertainty mixed with his plague of worries in a befuddling whirlpool of nervousness. As one may or may not know, it can take quite a while for one to navigate themselves out of a whirlpool of such demanding emotions.

In the end he decided to send one of his wood clones to go check it out, he didn't feel entirely comfortable with leaving his charges behind with superficial protection. He formed the necessary hand seals and the mirror image of himself saluted him through the shadowed darkness before bounding away. _Now I just have to sit and wait--Wait! What?_

Directly in front of him, it's shine slightly obscured by an indiscriminate distance, another light flickered to life. Yamato had just enough time to blink before a similar brightness sparked to life, a smidgen to the right of the last apparition. One, two, three--seven different sources of light suddenly ignited before him in rapid succession. _Crap! What?!_

The unexpected dissipation of the chakra he had set aside for his wood clone startled him at the same time the rest of the surrounding forest was illuminated with bright, unearthly spots of light. Yamato yelped in surprise, instinctively yanking out a kunai and jumping to his feet in one calculated motion.

The countless specks, luminescent and pulsing erratically, swirled and split into a dizzying kaleidoscope of blinding light and dark. They were close and far away at the same time. He cried out, unconsciously covering his dazzled eyes with his forearm as his head reeled. He stumbled backwards, the heel of his boot making a loud twang noise as it slid over rough bark. _Huh? A loud twang? What--_

Fire suddenly erupted from his shoulder as the jagged edge of an arrowhead imbedded itself deep into the tensed muscle, burrowing deep enough to scratch the bone.

Yamato gasped as his senses were overloaded with the earth-shattering collision of reality and illusion. He was vaguely aware of a swirling backdrop of flickering motes of light, grinning faces cast in a devilish red glow, and the gut-wrenching sensation of falling before the world exploded.

* * *

"Shit!"

Sakura jolted into awareness at the deafening boom that reverberated through the forest. She shrieked, snapping into an upright position, her blankets spilling about her. She whipped her head around, panting, only to see the similar expressions of shock and fear on the shadowed faces of her friends.

"Oh my god, what _was_ that?!" Ino's eyes were wide as she quickly yanked back her covers with an unnecessary amount of force.

"I do believe it was an explosion," the sound of Sai's voice came from behind her, "You can tell because of the--"

"Shut up! We know what an explosion is!" Sakura snapped nervously as she hastily rolled up her bedroll with military precision, "Idiot..." she muttered under breath, distractedly.

"Guys, where's Yamato-taichou?" Chouji asked nervously, "Wasn't he--

Sakura screamed as a volley of fire-tipped arrows rained down upon them from every direction. The incoming assault briefly illuminated the many dark figures speeding through the tree trunks towards them, their blades reflecting the light with a hellish gleam.

Even as an army of Naruto's shadow clones sprung into the air, creating an impromptu shield for them, Sakura couldn't help but think one thing.

_Kakashi-sensei, where are you?!_

_

* * *

_

_Alright, things are really picking up now :) I'm excited!_

_This chapter took a while to write, I wasn't sure how I wanted it to go. I think this is my first time writing an action scene (or at least the intro to an action scene) and I hope it wasn't super confusing or anything. But, just in case it was, I'll sum it up really quick. Kakashi and Shikamaru successfully raided the supply tent, stealing all of the poisons and antidotes from the rogue Sand-ninja. They noticed that no one was at the camp anymore and they felt something was wrong and decided to head back to the clearing where the rest of their team was. Meanwhile, Yamato is keeping watch for the others as they sleep. He falls under a genjutsu and is shot with a fire-tipped poison arrow (yeah, overkill much?). The rogue-ninja make an explosion (probably copying off Shikamaru's distractionary tactics used during the rescue, the lamos) which woke up Sakura, Sai, Naruto, Ino, and Chouji. They got up just in time to get ready for an attack. _

_Anyway, thankyou for reading! Please, please, please review and tell me what you think! I've never really written anything so action-packed and want to know if I'm doing it right lol. Any suggestions or criticisms would be greatly appreciated and I will definitely listen to and try to build off of whatever you say--so review!_

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	9. Chapter 9

_Please read this note!!!!!_

_This chapter will have some violence in it. If you are a squeamish person and do not want to read about people getting hurt (not that anyone else really wants to!) then I suggest that you do not read the following chapter. I know that I have rated this as Mature, however, this is not because of the violence. I do not believe, as of right now, that anything I write will be so violent as to warrant a Mature rating. I rated this story as Mature because of certain dark themes that will present themselves later in the story. So, basically, this chapter will be violent but it will not be overwhelming. Read at your own discretion._

_Thanks!_

* * *

"Ino!" Sakura's shrill scream rent through the cold night air, mingling eerily with the abrupt, angry sounds of battle. He froze for a split second, cold dread lacing through his veins.

A split second was all the time the rogue ninja needed.

Naruto jerked his head back just in time, the oily steel of a poison-laden blade swinging close enough to his face to spray his cheeks with stinging droplets. Before he could clash the swinging sword with his kunai and deliver a furious kick to his attacker's chest, the heavy metal of a rounded shield collided with the back of his head.

Naruto slashed blindly in front of him as he stumbled forwards, ears ringing. Globules of hot blood splattered up at him and arced across his chest wetly as his kunai cut a jagged line through the man's thigh. Before either of his two opponents could strike again, the Jinchuuriki twisted his body into a sideways roll mid-leap. Landing in a haphazard crouch, his feet and hands sliding over the slick grass, he wasted no time in propelling himself backwards into the air.

For a split second he was suspended upside down above the hectic battle.

Everything was illuminated by the hazy glow of the sun rising majestically above the treetops, swathed in regal clouds. The small clearing below him was swarmed with tightly pressed bodies, a churning cacophony of frenzied movement. The loud clang of steel hitting steel was punctuated with harsh battle-cries and shrieks of pain. Naruto searched frantically for any sign of his teammates but was unable to discern their figures through the muddled hysteria.

He swiftly tucked his knees into his chest, using his momentum to flip three times before he fell back to Earth. He managed to drop-kick one man in the chest and clip another in the shoulder with a kunai before he landed. A thin splash of spilt blood bloomed up about his shins as his feet touched down on the battle-strewn grass.

Naruto took a deep, gasping, breath. _I need to find the others! _He ducked reflexively as the tell-tale whistle of sharp steel cutting through air alerted him to an attack from his right. Gritting his teeth, the Jinchuuriki quickly made some hand signs. Four shadow clones sprung into a defensive position around him, giving him a couple seconds to reach into his weapons pouch and grab some shurikan.

He panted, beads of sweat sliding down his face. The need to find his teammates pressed upon him with a heaviness that was hard to focus around. The thought that one of them could be dead or dying right now plagued his mind and filled him with a wild fear.

_Kaka-sensei, we need you!_

_

* * *

_

"Shikamaru, stay with Tenzou." The words came out rushed and terse, but the last thing Kakashi cared about right now was his composure.

He didn't even wait for an answering nod before springing forwards.

They had arrived at the scene just in the nick of time. Tenzou, his face pale and twisted in an uncharacteristic grimace, had been struggling to fend off a small group of the rogue Sand-ninja. The sight of his old ANBU teammate stumbling around, a thick arrow shaft burrowed deeply in the shoulder of a limp arm, had temporarily stopped Kakashi's heart.

He hadn't even been able to muster up a sliver of shame when Shikamaru had caught up with him. The younger jounin had unfortunately sprinted in just in time to see Kakashi rip a man's ear off and stab a kunai into his bared neck. The rest lay in contorted heaps of mutilated flesh about him.

But that didn't matter. Their names repeated in his head like a mantra to the beat of his heart.

_Naruto. Sakura. Sai. Ino. Chouji._

Heartbeat.

_Naruto. Sakura. Sai. Ino. Chouji._

Now he thought of nothing else but the burn in his muscles as he pushed them to their limit. He did not allow himself any other thought, lest his mind stray to the possibility that one of his precious people could be hurt. There was only what he was doing and what he was going to do, there were no _what if's_ to distract him. He was the mission.

The sound of whooshing air roared in his ears and his eyes narrowed into cat-like slits against the rough wind. The sharp sting of his bare foot slapping against rough bark jolted up his shin. Sharp branches scratched and tore at his clothes. He forgot himself in the overwhelming need to protect them. He was the mission.

_Naruto. Sakura. Sai. Ino. Chouji._

* * *

"Chouji!" Sakura roared, "Take Ino and go!"

Her foot slipped slightly on the trampled grass as she backed up against a tree, clutching her best friend's limp body close to her chest. Chouji slammed one meaty fist into a charging enemy, sending the screaming man flying backwards into a faraway tree trunk. He shook his head stubbornly and his thick lips pressed together in determination.

Sakura watched on in horror.

At some point during the surprise ambush, Ino had gotten nicked by the poisoned blade of a katana. Sakura, who had been fighting back to back with the girl, hadn't even noticed until the blonde had crumpled to the ground behind her. She had somehow managed to parry the furious onslaught and scoop up her fallen teammate. Chouji, who had been smashing skulls not too far away from them, heard Sakura's call of distress and barreled through the rogue-ninja ranks to help.

Now they were all backed into a corner of the clearing, enemies pressing in on them relentlessly, no sign of Naruto, and with only the tiring Akimichi to defend them.

Things couldn't be worse.

Ino mumbled something vaguely into Sakura's shoulder. The sight of her childhood friend with her head lolling weakly, eyes half-lidded and glassy, was just too much. Sakura felt her mental-state crumbling. _This can't be happening! This can't be happening!_

Sakura clutched the girl closer and watched with wide, panicked eyes as Chouji just barely blocked the swing of a large broadsword with his kunai. Beads of sweat dripped down the sides of his face and into his squinted eyes.

He wasn't going to last much longer. Sakura knew that it was only a matter of time before he was struck as well. And then, Sakura struggled to breathe evenly at the thought, then she would have to somehow protect the both of them. She knew that was impossible, they would all die. The simple fact of the matter was that Chouji had to take Ino and leave the battle.

Even though the Yamanaka was deteriorating rapidly, Sakura knew that she stood a better chance of survival outside of the merciless violence of battle.

"Chouji! Take her and go!" Sakura tried to reason with him, desperate.

"No, I-" he grunted as he grabbed a rogue-ninja's wrist, stopping a dripping kunai an inch from his face, "I won't leave you!"

Sakura wanted to cry. If he didn't leave now, she was certain he would get hurt and--

"Chouji!" She cried out in horror, wide green eyes following the path of a poison-slicked axe as it swung powerfully towards his unprotected side.

Chouji, both of his arms occupied with wrestling away a double-bladed sword, could only peer over his shoulder at the incoming attack as it swung--

The black-garbed figure of her sensei, tall and imposing, stopped the rogue-ninja's swing with one lightning fast grip to the wrist. Sakura's breath caught in her throat, her mind sluggish in it's inability to process what had just happened. _So fast!_

Before the man's face could even register shock, his unkept features illuminated with the light of approaching dawn, Kakashi broke his wrist. There was a loud howl of pain and disbelief as the splintered edges of broken bone ripped through skin, sending a light spray of red mist into the air.

The Copy-nin's mismatched eyes were cold and intense, boring into the man's shocked face with a tremendous rage and ferocity that could barely be described as human. Sakura's heart leapt into her throat and she couldn't move.

Silently, without any hesitation or change in expression, her sensei tightened his grip on the dislocated man's wrist and kicked him solidly in the chest.

Judging by the audible pop and frozen expression on the rogue-ninja's face, Sakura could guess that Kakashi had simultaneously dislocated the man's shoulder and stopped his heart. She watched with a horrified fascination as he proceeded to dispose of their remaining enemies with a brutality and savageness she had never thought possible. It was all she could do to stand and breathe. She had never been confronted with such viciousness in her life.

Even the rogue-ninja faltered at the sight of the Copy-nin. Any slight hesitation in their blows was anticipated and taken advantage of. A growing uneasiness pooled into the clearing and, underneath it, there was the almost tangible buzz of a nameless, primitive fear.

It started as a gradual backing away and soon evolved into a panicked retreat. Sakura's heart leapt with joy as her eyes caught sight of Naruto's orange-striped jumpsuit through the chaotic limps and bodies of fleeing rogue-ninja. He was stubbornly fighting a group of rogue-ninja who had refused to run with the rest of their comrades. Relief washed over her with such intensity it was almost crippling.

Just when everything seemed to be turning to their favor, a harsh command echoed over the small clearing.

"STOP! YOU WILL STAY AND FIGHT!"

All eyes honed in on Hijame. He was standing, irresolute and furious, in the midst of the retreating ninja. "You will stay and fight like men!" He roared. Enraged at the faltering morale of his soldiers, he swung a large fist into the face of one of the fleeing men.

They continued to break apart from their ranks in a mindless panic. Kakashi whirl-winded towards him, cutting down men mercilessly as he went. Hijame's mouth set and his eyes darkened, following the Copy-ninja's movements with a resentful, malicious glare.

He reached into a hidden pocket in his vest at the same moment that the cry of a thousand birds echoed through the clearing. Sakura could only watch with wide eyes, everything happened with a speed that was nearly impossible to comprehend.

Kakashi charged towards Hijame, his fingers curled around the flickering and snapping mess of raw electric energy. Hijame clenched a small glass vial in one hand, some dark liquid sloshing around inside. In the matter of milliseconds it took for Kakashi to appear in front of the rogue-ninja leader, Hijame had opened the bottle and poured it into his mouth.

The next moment Kakashi's fist was buried somewhere deep inside Hijame's chest and blood was everywhere. Sakura felt a rush of relief resound within her, everything was going to be okay. Her sensei had shown up and saved the day, everything was how it was supposed to be.

Hijame's legs buckled beneath him and he started to fall backwards. His face was contorted into an expression that looked strangely like he was holding his breath.

But before he could completely fall to the ground, the man clapped both of his hands together in front of him with as much strength as he could muster, effectively catching Kakashi's head between his large palms. The Copy-ninja staggered under the sudden weight, one arm buried deep in his enemy's entrails and the other pin-wheeling frantically for balance. Hijame, his arm muscles quivering with the strain, pulled himself up so that his narrowed eyes were less than an inch from Kakashi's.

Sakura, Naruto, and Chouji could only watch on in disbelief as the impossible happened.

With one quick jerk, Kakashi's mask was pooled around his neck. Sakura could hardly see his bared face because of the distance between them, but she thought she could make out wide, surprised eyes, a straight nose, and a slightly parted mouth. Hijame partly puckered his lips, almost like he was going to kiss her sensei, and a cloud of black, coiling mist tumbled out of his mouth and into Kakashi's gasping one.

Sakura stared, a deep feeling of wrongness and fear filling her, as her sensei breathed in some of the black vapor.

* * *

_Woo cliffhanger! _

_I wanted to warn you guys that I probably won't be able to write much more for a while cause Thursday I'm leaving on a trip where there shall be no writing of fanfiction. So, if it takes a while for me to update it's not because I'm giving up on this story, it's cause I'm too busy. Anyway, it shouldn't last for more than a week or so :) So please be patient with me and don't stop reading! Reviews are always received with much celebration and happy dances._

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	10. Chapter 10

The blue halo of snapping and whistling electricity behind his shadowed silhouette dissolved into the cold morning air with a final spurt of flickering sparks.

Kakashi coughed violently.

His right was arm submerged in Hijame's chest up to his shoulder. His thin bloodstained fingers twitched with the last vestiges of white-hot electricity, poking through the back of the man's gory shoulders where a spinal column should have been. Sakura distantly noted that Kakashi's white hair was spattered with red.

He tried to back away, simultaneously coughing into the elbow of his free arm and raising it to stop the descent of Hijame's frozen, triumphant grin as the heavy corpse leaned into him. He staggered backwards and, sandaled feet slipping on the blood-spattered grass, tripped over the fallen body of a slain rogue-ninja. He fell flat on his back, unable to catch himself, and Hijame's heavy carcass fell with him.

"Kakashi-sensei." Sakura gasped in horror. She stepped forwards in an unconscious attempt to get to him.

But there was no need, Naruto got there first.

"Sensei!" He quickly grabbed Hijame's enormous shoulders and, with one great heave, lifted the crushing weight off of his trapped teacher. There was a wet squelching sound as Kakashi's arm came free of the ruptured entrails and organs of the dead man.

Sakura felt sick.

"Sensei." Naruto said again, looking down at him with wide eyes. Kakashi rolled jerkily onto his side and his slender frame shook as he coughed into his elbow, slick with blood and gory slivers of torn tissue. "Are," Naruto hovered uncertainly over Kakashi's hunched figure, not sure if he should help or not, "Are you okay?"

Kakashi nodded twice through the hacking coughs. Sakura could only see his eyes, squeezed shut in an acute expression of pain. The rest of his face was covered by his bloody forearm. But the sight sent a jolt of recognition through her. She had seen a very similar expression on his face before.

The image of a smiling Kakashi, his eyes squinting closed overtop of a black-felt mask, suddenly came to the front of her mind. But before she could think about this new-found realization, Shikamaru and Yamato crashed through the trees.

"Sakura!" Shikamaru called out in an uncharacteristically strained voice, "Captain Yamato is injured." She turned to see the young jounin supporting a pale-faced Wood-user, "I have all of the poisons and antidotes right--" he seemed to notice Ino's limp body in her arms because he stopped mid-sentence, his face a curious blend between the uptight, focused expression he had been wearing and the numb look of shock that had started to take over.

There was a split second where Sakura's head reeled, completely overwhelmed with all that was happening, and then she snapped into medic-mode.

"Alright, Shikamaru, can you lay him down next to Ino for me?" She said as she gently set down her best friend, "After you've done that bring this water bottle to Kakashi-sensei, he's over there next to Naruto. Here, put the antidotes here. Chouji, could you go through that bag and separate the poisons from the antidotes and divide them into the different types for me?"

"How do I do that?" Chouji sat down heavily next to her.

"When I was in the camp I talked to some of the more knowledgeable rogue-ninja and they told me how their poisons are labeled." Sakura slipped off he backpack and pulled out her med-kit as she spoke, "First is the scientific name, it's usually two words, and it's followed by a dash and then a capital letter. The poisons are labeled alphabetically and their respective antidotes have the same capital letter."

Yamato moaned softly. He reflexively reached up to hold his bloody shoulder, not conscious enough to realize that there was an arrow shaft jutting out of it but conscious enough to feel it. Sakura batted his hand away testily. "Don't touch it."

Frowning, Sakura hurriedly attached a hypodermic needle to one of the hard-plastic syringes she had taken from her med-kit. As bad as he was hurting, she had to treat Ino first. The fact was that he was conscious and the blonde-haired girl wasn't.

But the sight of Yamato's eyes, brown, doe-eyed, and in agony, pulled at her heart strings.

Sometimes Sakura forgot how young their team leaders were. It was so easy to just write them off as boring, unrelatable adults because of the mountains of experience they had. But, as Kakashi's coughs rang in her ears and Yamato's hand fisted in the grass before her, Sakura knew that wasn't true. They were human, just like everyone else.

"Sakura," her attention snapped back to focus as Chouji called to her, "Is that good?"

She felt a wave of fondness rush through her as her large Akimichi friend frowned down at his work, his chubby cheeks making the expression remarkably childlike. Before him a generous amount of little glass vials were laid carefully on the red-tinted, dewy grass, separated into different clusters.

With just a quick look she could see that her suspicions were correct. At least 40% of the poisons consisted of a dark blue liquid, the respective antidote a clear purple-tinged solution. It was safe to assume that all of the rogue-ninja had used one poison to lace all of their weapons and that Ino and Yamato had been infected by the same toxin. It was still a small gamble but, in the medical field, it often was.

"That's great, thanks Chouji." She smiled a thin, tight smile as she collected some of the antidote into two syringes. The first one she only filled the barrel two thirds of the way up and the second one she filled it up three fourths of the way. She then diluted it with a solution of water that she had on hand, getting rid of any air bubbles.

"Squeeze her arm right here for me, I need help finding a vein." She quickly poured some disinfectant on a cotton swab and swiped it on the crease of Ino's elbow, throwing it to the side as soon as she was done. She bit her lip as she held her best friend's hand in hers and forced it to open and close a couple of times. _I just need one vein, c'mon Ino, c'mon--There!_

Forcing herself to move slowly, Sakura carefully positioned the syringe that was two thirds full above the slight blue raise in Ino's milky white skin. She held her hands steady as the needle tip broke the skin and she slowly pushed down on the piston pump, injecting her best friend's veins with what she hoped was a life-saving antidote. _Alright, that's one down..._ She breathed a sigh of relief before moving over to Yamato.

"Okay, Captain Yamato, I'm going to need you to relax as much as possible, can you do that for me?" Sakura unconsciously adopted that calm tone of voice she used for little kids when they were hurt and upset. He nodded quickly, his brow furrowed slightly, and took a deep breath in before relaxing his muscles.

Not taking the time to roll up his sleeve, Sakura grabbed the hem and ripped it open all the way to his shoulder. She dimly noted that she wouldn't need Chouji to squeeze his arm for her to find a vein while she rubbed another cotton swab along his muscular forearm. She ignored how his glassy eyes were sliding closed and injected him with the antidote.

She held her breath and waited. _Please dear God, please let this work. _Sakura wrung her hands nervously as she sat next to Chouji and waited for their friends to come back to life. It was so much harder when there was nothing she could do. _It shouldn't be like this, I'm a medic! _she thought childishly to herself, stubbornly ignoring the fact that having medical knowledge wasn't some magical answer to exterminating all of the heart-ache in her life.

Ino groaned.

"Ino!" Sakura's eyes snapped open and she was greeted with the sight of her best friend blinking furiously against the bright light of morning, one hand raised delicately to her temple.

"Don't you ever do something so stupid again, you dumb Ino-pig!" Sakura cried out joyfully and hugged her tightly. Ino gave a weak laugh, but hugged her back.

"Hey, Sakura," Yamato coughed, "Do you think you could do something about this arrow? It's kinda... in me." He trailed off lamely.

"What?" She looked over to see the former ANBU grinning weakly at her, "Oh, yeah."

She handed Ino over into Chouji's capable hands, chuckling to herself when she heard her yell, "No Chouji! For the last time, I don't want something to eat!"

She was mending the torn tissue and splintered bone in Yamato's shoulder with her glowing, chakra infused hands when the rest of the team came over. Kakashi's mask was pulled back up and he looked completely normal except for the fact that he was missing a shoe, his white hair was streaked with a sticky red, and his entire right arm was slimed with the gossamer remains of entrails. Shikamaru and Naruto had curiously flushed cheeks, and Sai was nursing a slight bump on the top of his head.

"Yo."

Sakura paused in her healing ninjustu for a moment, peering suspiciously between Kakashi's bland, half-lidded stare and her teammate's flustered expressions. Her green eyes narrowed. _What?_

Naruto shuffled his feet under her intense scrutiny but was unable to wipe the beaming, victorious smile from his blushing face.

"Oh my god." Sakura's eyes widened.

Kakashi lifted a thin, slanted eyebrow, "Hmm?"

"You, you!" She stood up suddenly, pointing an accusing finger at the three of them, "You saw his face, didn't you?!"

* * *

_Haha, sucks for Sakura! I would be mad too if I were her. And for anyone who didn't understand Sai's reaction, it was because he probably said something inappropriate and Naruto smacked him upside his tooth._

_Anyway, it's good to be writing again, this story is like a constant itch in the back of my mind. As for the medical information, I tried to be as accurate as possible. If there is anything I wrote about that is completely unrealistic or unprofessional I apologize. I know this chapter was a little boring, but it needed to be written. Believe it or not, we are getting closer to the good stuff! Thankyou to anyone who has been reading this, and thankyou for your patience! _

_Unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask for some more. This next week is crazy in every sense of the word (I'm racing at Penn Relays and--I heard USAIN BOLT was going to be there!! OhGodOhGodOhGod!) and I won't be able to update till next monday or so. _

_So please, please review and let me know what you think. _

_~Flintyminty25_


	11. Chapter 11

"There!" Naruto gripped Sakura's shoulder and pointed excitedly towards the form of their sleeping sensei, "See, he did it again!"

"Sshh!" Sakura hissed angrily and Naruto barely ducked the fist swinging towards his head, "People are _sleeping_!" She knocked him under his unguarded chin as she said the last word for emphasis. His seat lifted an inch off of the cave floor in an impressive display of Sakura's easily provoked temper. He crashed back to the earth, limbs flailing from the jarring impact. The Jinchuriki started laughing giddily, clutching his stomach and rolling from side to side. Sakura's brow ticked.

Sai readied himself for an explosion, snatching up his pad and paintbrush just in case he would need to fly away at short notice.

He had learned that whenever the team medic's face got that twitchy, constipated look objects would start flying. That, or she would exclaim passionately about the terrible service in the restaurant. Seeing as they were currently hiding out in a damp cave along Konoha's border for the night and there were no pimply waiters nearby... it was only safe to assume that her reaction would be the former...

"C'mon, Sakura-chan!" Naruto whispered excitedly as he raised his blanket to shield himself from the flying ball of dirty socks aimed at his grinning face, "Just look at him!"

She seemed to pause at this, thermos held high over her head in a threatening gesture, and tilted her head to peer curiously at her sensei. Sai contemplated informing her that her hot cocoa was spilling out of the container and onto the corner of Shikamaru's blanket behind her. However, after a thorough evaluation of Shikamaru's slothful character, he determined that the Shadow-user might appreciate a relaxing, warm soak before going to sleep.

Kakashi growled.

It was a deep, rumbling sound that lost it's ire halfway through, fading into a soft moan that echoed loudly in the quiet night. Lying on his side with his back to the pockmarked stone wall, the Copy-ninja was curled in on himself. His blanket had been pushed up during his fitful sleep to tangle around his neck and shoulders, partially covering the side of his masked face not resting on his pack. There was a barely recognizable frown, a small furrowing of his only visible eyebrow and a gentle pouting of his lips. Kakashi's lean legs, bent and blanketless, quivered slightly and made weak, half-hearted kicking movements.

For some reason Sai felt a deep, calming warmth waft through his chest at the sight. He blinked a couple of times, realizing that he was feeling something but not really knowing what it was.

"Aww," Sakura cooed in a noticeably softer tone than normal, "He looks like a little puppy!" She giggled, setting down the newly emptied thermos beside her, and lifted a hand to cover her smiling lips. Sai stared at Kakashi's face, unguarded in sleep, and wondered if he were to impersonate an animal would Sakura look at him like that. He was always trying to bond with his teammates, and he had just recently become aware of how important facial expressions were for human interaction.

But while he was pondering the possible consequences of lifting his lips like a horse at the unpredictable female, his two teammates had already formed a plan of sorts.

"Shh! Hahaha." Naruto laughed over his female teammate's protests as he leaned over his sensei's slumbering form, fingers waggling in anticipation as they neared the masked face, "Watch this."

"Naruto..." Sakura growled threateningly, fisting her hand in the back of the Jinchuriki's jacket. But she didn't look away and she didn't pull him back. He stretched further forwards, lips pressed together in a devious, excited smile. His fingertips brushed the soft material of the mask.

Kakashi grunted sleepily, slowly tilting his head back away from the touch until the movement was halted by the wall behind him. His felt-tipped nose scrunched and he shook his head minutely, spilling glossy slivers of feathery white hair into his face. There was a tense moment where nobody moved. The Copy-ninja's breathing evened out into soft snores once again.

Naruto let out the breath he had been holding and, with a painstaking carefulness that Sai hadn't known his teammate was capable of, started to roll down the edge of the thin fabric. Sakura leaned forward over his shoulder, eyes comically wide and transfixed on the face of her former sensei.

The dark material slid slowly down and Sai could just make out the beginnings of high cheekbones and the straight, thin bridge of Kakashi's nose in the dim moonlight.

But before the mask could be lowered another millimeter, the quiet, steady rhythm of snores hitched. A split second passed before Kakashi's eye snapped open, animalistic and intense. His gloved hand lunged forwards with a speed that was nearly impossible to track and wrapped around Naruto's neck in a death grip. Sakura screamed.

There was a sudden shuffling of blankets as the rest of their teammates were jolted into awareness. But, just as Yamato shot up quickly into a sitting position, head whipping around in search of the danger, Kakashi seemed to come back to himself.

The Copy-ninja gasped, grey eye widening in realization as he took in the sight of Naruto's red, grimacing face. He yanked his hand back as if he had been burned, a loud curse spilling from his lips. Naruto fell to his knees, breathing hard. Sakura was beside him in a second, rubbing a soothing hand over his hunched back, but unable to tear her gaze from Kakashi. Sai found his jaw clenching as a tense silence filled the suddenly stuffy cave air.

Kakashi gasped, panting hard, and looked down at his slightly shaking hands, pale in the moonlight. He swallowed audibly before looking up into Naruto's shocked face, grey eye wide and frightened. But before anyone could make a move towards them or say anything he stood up stiffly.

He turned rigidly on his heel so that he was facing the entrance to the cave, head tilted slightly downwards and shoulders in a tense, half-shrug. He stood there for a couple of strained seconds before forcing out a gruff, "Sorry."

Team Seven and Team Ten could only watch as the Copy-ninja quickly stepped out of the cave and into the chilly night.

* * *

"He's okay, isn't he Yamato-taichou?" Ino asked, scooting over and leaning over his crossed legs to pull out a low-calorie bar from her bag, which was next to him. He really needed to talk to her about her diet. It simply wasn't logical to go into potential life and death situations when you're body wasn't getting the proper nutrition it needs. She carefully stripped the food of it's wrapper, artlessly dropping the trash into his lap after she had peeled off the plastic.

Maybe while he was addressing her poor eating habits he would explain the matter of respecting other's space.

"Yamato-taichou?"

Tenzou looked up to see Sakura and Chouji's worried expressions, Naruto's wide blue eyes, Shikamaru's calculating stare, Sai's blank face, and Ino's raised eyebrow. He coughed.

"Of course," Tenzou forced a smile and nodded, "Kakashi-senpai is fine. You should all go back to sleep."

Before any questions could be asked, the wood-user flipped over onto his side and pulled his blanket up to his chin, facing the darkness of the cave. He stared straight ahead, listening to the sounds of his team as they reluctantly returned to bed. They whispered loudly between themselves. Tenzou frowned.

They knew nothing.

It shouldn't have rankled him so, but he just couldn't stamp out a spark of anger at their behavior. Kakashi was their leader, they should have enough sense to politely ignore what just happened.

The Copy-ninja was a complicated man with a lot of strange mannerisms and a roundabout way of handling people, he knew that. But, underneath the practiced defense mechanisms and prickly exterior was one of the purest souls he had ever encountered. Didn't they know that Kakashi had no limits when it came to them? There was nothing that man wouldn't do or endure for their sakes, and he would do it without complaint-beg to do it even. And to hear them whispering about him, giggling behind their hands as if he had just done something childishly embarrassing... it made him downright angry!

Tenzou sighed. No doubt the man was outside right now, beating himself up and choking with shame. He knew Kakashi, he'd known him since ANBU, and he knew that the man wasn't nearly as emotionless as he would like others to think. When the Copy-ninja had secretly rejoined ANBU, during the time when both Naruto and Sakura had found other teachers, Tenzou had been given the task of reading over the man's application.

Now, as he lay wrapped tightly in his blanket, facing the darkness, he couldn't help but remember some of the things that he had stumbled upon in the perusal of his medical files.

At age seven and three months the famed Copy-ninja had been diagnosed with a severe case of attachment disorder and a milder case of obsessive compulsive disorder.

From ages nine to twelve there were repeated examinations regarding the suspicion that he was struggling with anorexia nervosa. The symptoms picked up again at seventeen years of age and he was issued with a doctor-approved meal plan that lasted for the next three months.

He was diagnosed with dissociation disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder at the age of seventeen, shortly before he left ANBU.

Tenzou didn't kid himself. He didn't fully understand the enigmatic Sharingan-user, and he probably never really would. But, he pursed his lips at the thought, he clearly understood him better than any of the younger jounin did. Kakashi wasn't nearly as bulletproof as he seemed.

He took in a deep breath through his nose and exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to relax. Really, medical ninjutsu was a miracle life-saver. But it didn't keep his wounded shoulder from throbbing hotly. He just needed to relax. There was nothing he could do about the situation without making Kakashi exceedingly uncomfortable or making the former ANBU look weak in front of his old students. Tenzou's eyes drifted closed and he began to doze off... Only to be jolted awake again by Shikamaru's exasperated yell.

"Chouji! Why is my blanket wet and smell like hot chocolate?!"

* * *

_Ah! It's good to be back!_

_Poor Kakashi, he's so adorable that he can't get a wink of sleep without some knuckle-head trying to see under his mask. And Naruto's already seen his face too! I don't know, I just have the feeling that after he sees Kakashi's face he wouldn't stop trying to get his mask off. (If anything his efforts have doubled!) _

_I'm a little anxious to see what you all think about this chapter because this was my first step in revealing Kakashi's character. I didn't want him to seem too wimpy (hence Naruto's near death by strangulation) but I'm slowly tearing down that invincible image of his and making it a little more human. I don't want to rewrite or change his character, I just want to add a little depth that's only really just been touched on in the manga. Please review and tell me what you think!_

_Can I just say that Penn Relays was the most intense, amazing experience of my life?! Usain Bolt ran a 8.79 split in his 4x100 and (OhMyGod!) he was running in the same lane that I did! He was the same leg too (anchor)! :'] Our feet touched the same orangey track particles... _

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	12. Chapter 12

Naruto rolled back over onto his left side with an angry flop.

He roughly settled his cheek down onto his pack, frowning when he couldn't seem to find a place for him to lay his head that was not bumpy and uncomfortable. He quelled down the restless energy thrumming through him and irritably kicked his legs in a futile attempt to disentangle himself from the stuffy clutch of his blanket.

Chouji let out a long, gurgling snore...

"Ugh!" Naruto just barely held in his roar of frustration, springing up into a sitting position with his hands balled into fists at his sides. _Why can't I sleep?! _

And just as suddenly as his restless anger had overwhelmed him, it was swept away, an almost unbearable exhausted urge to cry taking it's stead. Naruto gritted his teeth, panting as he tried to regain control of himself. He hated nights like this.

Filled with an indomitable restlessness, so powerful that his skin itched with the strain of containing it, he could never sleep. And, for some reason, it was always on the nights that he was beyond fatigued that this strange affliction overcame him... _This, _Naruto slowly relaxed his hands, looking around at his sleeping teammates with a miserable sort of jealousy, _sucks!... All I want... All I want is sleep... Why can't I fall--_

His watery blue eyes flitted despairingly over the shadowed, mossy walls of the cave before catching on the crumpled blanket lying forlornly across from him.

"Oh..." The small enclosure was quiet and still as realization, tinged with the sour tang of guilt, washed over him. Naruto groaned, bowing his head forwards, and rubbed his knuckles into his dry, itchy eyes. _Makes sense... I never could fall asleep on a guilty stomach..._

He straightened slightly, squinted left eye twitching through the spaces between his fingers as he slid his hand slowly down his face. Okay, if he didn't get sleep soon, all of the powers of rational thought would be lost from him. He had to find Kakashi.

With much resentful grumbling and hushed curses, Naruto stubbornly managed to traverse the prone bodies of his teammates as well as an assortment of unnecessary bags that he really didn't remember any of them owning, and stumbled through a freshly spun spiders web out into the crisp, night air.

* * *

How did one differentiate between the poisonous fuzzy caterpillars and the not poisonous fuzzy caterpillars?

Kakashi hugged himself tightly, ignoring the small tremors that raced through his taut frame, and cast a skeptical eye on the wooly larvae before him. _Really, _he frowned, _unless the whole of the entire avian race possesses an inborn, supernatural tendency to always guess correctly, thousands of bird species would have been forced into extinction through the kamikaze war tactics of this little bug._

His eye widened, _Who's to say that scores of unlucky, risk-taking birdy gamblers haven't fallen prey to it already? _He took a stuttered step back, a new-found respect for the creepy-crawlies casting them in a more menacing light.

A twig snapped.

"Shit." Kakashi muttered tensely, uncovered eye flinching closed as an uncontrollable shudder gripped him. For some reason he was gasping, gloveless hands fisting in the thin fabric of his shirt under his armpits.

"Sensei?" A hesitant voice asked. More snapping twigs and crunching leaves, "It's me, Naruto."

Why did he feel so dizzy? Kakashi shook his head to clear it but stopped, swaying on his feet, when the action just made it worse. What was Naruto doing up? He should be catching up on sleep.

"Listen I'm," there was a small pause as the Jinchuriki solemnly stepped over a fallen branch, "I'm sorry, Kaka-sensei."

Sorry? Kakashi had nearly ripped the boy's spinal cord out through the front of his throat. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the uncomfortable lethargy that had settled like a fog over his mind as well as his blurrily careening vision.

"Naruto, don't-" he panted, overcome with the tightness in his chest, and was unable to finish his sentence.

"No." Before him now, Naruto shook his blonde head, "I shouldn't have tried to look under your mask when you were sleeping. Shikamaru was right, I was being goofy. But, I never meant to freak you out or anything." Blue eyes looked up earnestly and widened when they connected with Kakashi's unfocused gaze. Naruto frowned.

"Sensei?"

It was those cerulean eyes looking at him worriedly again.

His sensei had such a calm countenance, he felt guilty for putting such an expression in those azure orbs. Kakashi shook his head again, words of explanation catching jumbled in his throat, and the world tilt even more. He staggered backwards a couple of steps, his breath catching in his throat noisily. A queer, tingly sensation swept through his trembling body and he had to latch onto a tree trunk for support.

"Kakashi-sensei?" _Kakashi-kun?_

"Are you okay?!" _Are you okay?_

He didn't want to bother him, his sensei had so many other things to worry about. Kakashi opened his mouth to tell him that he was fine, but all that came out was a strangled moan of pain as his neck muscle spasmed and then clenched.

* * *

Naruto frowned as his former sensei stumbled clumsily backwards, breathing raggedly. He caught himself on a nearby tree trunk, fingers scrabbling slightly over the dry bark, and held himself up.

"Kakashi-sensei?" A strange, cold dread pooled into the pit of his stomach.

His blue eyes widened in shock when the man before him crumpled to the leaf covered forest floor. Naruto took a step forward and then a step back, unsure if he should touch him or not.

"Are you okay?!"

In some distant part of his brain, as Kakashi's body contorted into tight angles and seizured before him, Naruto wondered why he always asked unnecessary questions.

* * *

_Sorry it's such a short chapter, but I just couldn't resist that potential cliffhanger :]_

_For anyone that isn't really getting what's going on, here's a synopsis. Naruto couldn't sleep because he unconsciously felt bad about what he did to Kakashi, so he went out to go apologize. Kakashi was standing outside in the cold, distracting himself from his guilty conscience and bad dreams with philosophical observations of a caterpillar. As Naruto begins to apologize, Kakashi starts to feel strange and out of it. A memory of his past sensei talking to him overlaps Naruto's words and he thinks that Naruto is actually his past sensei. Kakashi falls down and starts to have a seizure._

_Poor thing..._

_Anyway! Please, please, please review! _

_Thanks!_

_~Flintyminty25_


	13. Chapter 13

Sakura fell out of sleep with a sudden lurch.

She gasped, blinking furiously as she adjusted to the sudden onslaught of sensory input. Naruto's eyes were opened wide, wet cerulean in the grey morning light. The tight grip of his hands shaking her shoulders snapped her neck in a painful staccato against her pack. It took a couple of seconds before she realized that he was speaking.

"-just fell down and started twitching all freaky-like, I was a'scared to touch him cause he was-"

"Naruto!" Sakura squeezed his wrists tightly to stop him shaking her.

"-making noises like he's hurt but I can't see what's wrong, and I didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to-"

"NARUTO!"

He flinched and made a small squeaking noise when she slapped him across the face. "Slow down," Sakura pushed herself up into a sitting position as Naruto panted and fisted his hands in her blanket, "What happened? Tell me again, but-"

Naruto, unable to waste time listening to her talk, simply yanked her up by her wrist, snatched up her pack, and dragged her outside. Sakura stumbled after him through the wet leaves as she tried to keep up with his frantic pace. The rest of their team's questioning voices were muffled by the thick foliage as they sped towards some unknown destination. The air was shockingly cold on her skin, the tall grasses-

_Kakashi._

That shuddering body, limbs folded in rigid, unforgiving positions of acute agony, could _not_ be her sensei. Sakura staggered forwards through two closely set tree trunks, her hands clenching into tight fists against the rugged bark, but was unable to move her feet any closer. Naruto was kneeling by his side, yelling at her to hurry up and do something, but all she could hear was Kakashi.

His soft wail of suffering was tremulous. It was like the frightened whining of an animal in pain. A feeble cry of hurt that she never could have imagined coming from the famed Copy-ninja. The sound of it pressed upon her ears until it was the only thing she could hear.

It was hard to breathe around that noise...

"Sakura!" Naruto snarled, forcing her to catch her pack as he sent it flying towards her, "Do something!" Sakura's hands fumbled clumsily as she caught it by reflex and hugged it tightly to her chest. The familiar movement grounded her and she was able to take a couple of deep breaths and step forwards shakily. _This can't be happening, I'm just dreaming, this isn't--_Kakashi cried out sharply when Naruto, in his state of frantic distress, forcefully pinned one of his thrashing shoulders into the grass.

Sakura snapped into medic-mode.

"Stop! Naruto, don't hold him down!" She ran over and crashed to her knees beside him, knocking his hands away, "I know," she turned her apologetic green eyes to his tearful blue ones and saw the hurt and confusion there, "I know that you just want to help him, but that will only make it worse." She reached out to cover his hand with hers, but he was looking at Kakashi again and started burying his fingers in the dewy grass.

"There's nothing we can do until it passes..." Sakura muttered tersely before turning her own gaze back to the man writhing on the forest floor. Her eyes softened and her throat grew tighter at the sight of him. _Kakashi-sensei..._

His breath was coming out in short hisses, like he was exhaling through gritted teeth. His hitae-ate had been pushed out of place and was now only partially covering his sharingan. She bit her lip at the glistening wetness on the visible part of his scarred cheekbone. He let out a strangled moan and Naruto's head fell forwards despairingly.

"Try," Sakura's voice cracked, "Try and get his headband off." She forced her voice to be calm, knowing that the boy beside her desperately needed all the reassurance he could get, "That's it, gently, gently. Okay, that's good." She reflexively smoothed down Kakashi's hair, the pale feathery spikes mussed from Naruto's helping hand, "Now try talking to him." Without realizing what she was doing, her fingers began to thread gently through her sensei's fine snowy strands in a soothing, repetitive motion. He gasped between hurried breaths and, eyes squeezed shut, tilted his head back into her caress as if desperate for comfort. Sakura sobbed drily as she remembered the last time she had stroked his hair, the present circumstances tainting the happy memory.

"Shh, sensei, it's okay." Naruto stumbled awkwardly through his reassurances, "We'll make it okay." Kakashi whimpered.

It was only when another pair of legs knelt down on the opposite side of their teacher that Sakura realized they weren't alone. Yamato, with a dark, somber look that was almost too calm, gently laid his hand on Kakashi's shuddering shoulder.

"The rest of the team has packed up camp and mapped out the shortest route to the nearest hospital." He looked up with shadowed eyes, his voice a whisper, "We'll be ready to leave at a moment's notice."

Sakura felt a rush of gratitude and admiration for the wood-user wash over her, nearly crippling her with a bizarre urge to cry. She looked away from him and continued stroking Kakashi's hair, distracting herself with the soft warmth of the thin milky strands. The three of them waited and watched in silence as the Copy-ninja's convulsions slowly faded back into occasional tremors at what felt like a torturously slow pace. _Good, _medic-Sakura evaluated reflexively, nodding slightly and sniffing, _If his seizure had lasted another minute..._

"Sensei?" Sakura swallowed, a small kernel of hope and relief budding within her chest. Her shaking hands brushed lightly over his sweated brow, his shaking hand, or tense shoulder in an unconscious attempt at reassuring herself. _He's fine, he's going to be okay. _She turned to smile shakily at Naruto, her eyes filling with relieved tears against her will. He returned a watery smile, but it was a smile nonetheless. Her fingers stilled their anxious petting and curled limply in the Copy-ninja's disheveled hair, reluctant to let him go.

She hadn't known how much Kakashi meant to her, to Team Seven until now.

As a genin, all of her attentions had been fixed on stealing the heart of her broody Uchiha teammate. Once in a while she was yanked out of her fantasy world and forced to see the other boy on her team, to acknowledge his fiery determination and unconquerable spirit. But never, never had she spared more than a passing thought for their teacher. He was always in the background, a slouched, neutral figure that one could always turn to for support or guidance, immediately forgotten once the desired aid was provided.

But now, as she watched Naruto laugh with tears running down his face and hold their teacher's pale hand, she knew that they would never take him for granted again. It was dumb really, that it took her teacher having a seizure for her to appreciate him. She promised herself that she would thank him the next time he--

Kakashi gasped loudly, both eyes snapping open to stare unseeingly up at Sakura's face.

One dark eye was almost completely dilated, the dark expanse of the pupil expanded so that there was only a thin circle of grey iris. But it was the other, flickering nauseatingly between dark animal black and a blood red pool flecked with spiraling tomoes, that pierced her through.

"Not mine," Kakashi's voice was a gravelly whisper, "'S not mine..."

"Shh, sensei," Sakura started to get up, unconsciously trying to back away from those nightmarish orbs and their piercing stare, "Don't talk right--"

"No!" Kakashi's eyes flinched closed and he tossed his head back and forth violently, "It isn't mine!"

"Sensei?" Her eyes widened in fear, and Naruto sat frozen beside her. For some reason he was scaring her more than when she had seen him wracked with a convulsions. A cold feeling of thick dread pooled into her stomach and sat there like lead. "K-Kakashi?" she asked in a small, frightened voice. Naruto gasped as the previously weak and trembling hand in his grasp crushed his fingers in a powerful death-grip.

And then he was hyperventilating, the harsh wet sound of air being pulled into a heaving chest only to be pushed back out before touching lungs. A choked sob spilled out and he shook his head wildly, silver hair flopping into his face. Sakura could only stumble backwards in shock when he rolled onto his side and started clawing at his face frantically, crying out as if he were burning.

But, before Naruto or herself could do anything, Yamato lunged forwards. He captured the Copy-ninja's wrists and flattened the man's thinner frame to the ground with his own body weight. Kakashi cried out loudly, the sharp sound piercing through the soft, grey morning air and reverberating through her bones. He thrashed about in an uncontrolled panic, the sound of fallen leaves rasping against slick grass making the struggle even louder.

"...sensei..." The tears were falling now and Sakura would forever have this image in her mind.

"Sakura!" Yamato grunted as Kakashi elbowed him in the ribs, "Go tell the others that we're leaving, Naruto and I've got this." When she failed to do anything but stare, open-mouthed and unmoving he growled, "Sakura! Now!"

She nodded numbly twice before her feet jerked her up and sprinted her away into the trees. She crashed blindly through the underbrush, sharp twigs and wet leaves slapping her face, as the scene she had just witnessed replayed itself over and over again in her head.

It was only when she stumbled over a tree root and into Chouji's surprised arms that she realized she was crying.

* * *

Naruto stared ahead at the endless expanse of trees before him and pushed off hard against the branches with his sandaled feet, cradling the weakly struggling body of his sensei tightly to his chest.

Shikamaru said they were about a three hour's travel away from Fire Country's border, and about another forty minutes away from the nearest town. Kakashi, wild eyed and earnest through his labored breathing, fisted his hand in the neck of Naruto's jumpsuit. "Puh-please... don't le-" His head lolled back suddenly and his rapid-fire breathing hitched as a powerful shudder wracked his body.

There was one thing Naruto was sure of.

"Don't... don't," the visible part of Kakashi's pale face crumpled into a heart-wrenching expression of agony, his words a frail whisper, "L-Luh... leave..."

He would make it to the nearest hospital within the next two hours.

They had to drop back to the forest floor and lay Kakashi on the floor as another seizure attacked his body, the third one in the last thirty-four minutes.

Or, at least, he sure as hell was gonna try.

* * *

_Okay, so that was definitely the hardest chapter yet._

_Sorry it took so long guys, for some reason I had to rewrite this about nine times before I could upload it. I'm anxious to hear what you all think--so please review! I really love hearing from you guys._

_Poor Kakashi... I felt really bad writing this._

_~Flintyminty25_


	14. Chapter 14

"I have him at 105.68! Is the bath ready yet?"

"No time, just cut his clothes with a scalpel."

"-a BPM of 203! He needs an oxygen mask and he needs it now!"

"Fill it with water from the cafeteria if you have to, just-"

"Would somebody get me a goddamn oxygen mask already!"

Sakura gritted her teeth and tried to block out the tense yells and white nurse uniforms that were bustling around her in the cramped hospital room.

Kakashi squirmed weakly under the onslaught of numerous hands, their brusque touch invasive and distressing in his semi-conscious state. His black, sweat-soaked ANBU tank was abruptly sliced open, the cold metal of the scalpel glinting as it ghosted over his pale, shuddering skin. Violent hyperventilations that had a desperate, sob-like breathiness to them wracked his body. Hot tears spilled out of his tightly shut sharingan as his back arched with agony, muscles that were already quivering with exhaustion falling into another bout of spasms.

Seeing him like this was completely surreal and terrifying. A nightmare.

"Sah!... Sah!" Kakashi's head rolled weakly from side to side as he tried to speak, only able to slip a single syllable in between wet gasps. "Sss-Nngh!" His pleading cry was interrupted by a loud whimper as the latest round of tremors intensified into more powerful convulsions.

"Shhh," Sakura's throat felt tight and her mouth felt dry but the reflexive cooing spilled out anyways.

She gently brushed some pale strands of sweaty hair out of his eyes, rubbing her thumb soothingly over the pained crease between his slanted brows. He had been calling out the names of people she had never met or heard of for the last fifteen minutes. Crying out in a lost, pleading voice that broke her heart to hear and sounded far too young, too hurt to be Kakashi.

But it was when she had heard hers and Naruto's names thrown into the jumbled mix that the familiar pinching had started behind her eyes. Somehow knowing that, out of the entire group of people he begged for, only herself and Naruto were there made it impossibly more painful to hear.

She threaded her fingers through his damp silvery locks again but paused, frowning, when her fingertips brushed over his sharingan.

The thin skin of his flinching eyelid was so translucently pale that the faint blush of purplish veins could be seen dusting across the glistening membrane. Heat that was as palpable as a thick blanket pressed upon the palm of her hand, an inch away from his feverish skin.

But it was not this that startled her.

It was the fluctuating press of tingling chakra, ebbing and flowing like a tide, against the skin of her hand. She immediately began to wonder why his chakra was acting so strangely, but Kakashi interrupted her revelation.

"Sah... Sas," He gasped weakly as his limbs stilled and his eyes rolled back into his head, wet lashes fluttering feverishly under the yellow light, "Sas-huh... Sasuke..."

_Sasuke._

Sakura stumbled back, her head reeling.

Sasuke? But Sasuke had- Sasuke was... Why would Kakashi call for Sasuke when he'd left them? Could it be that her stoic, unflappable team leader was secretly just as torn up over the betrayal of their teammate as she was? Sakura quickly shook her head.

There wasn't time for this; she had to think about it later. Preferably when one of her friends wasn't dying on a hospital cot before her…

Stepping back up to the side of his cot she placed her palm over his sharingan again, this time paying close attention to the chakra current. Something was wrong here, and she had a feeling that if she didn't find out what it was then things would get a lot worse.

So, ignoring the fact that his grimacing face had now relaxed into limp unconsciousness, his diaphragm had started spasming rapidly in small up-down movements that were really just an imitation of the taking in of air, and the frantic bustling of nurses around her-Sakura shut everything out and steeled herself, forcing her mind to reach that level of focus and intensity that saved lives.

His chakra washed over her hand in waves.

A faint tickle, almost like the prickle of static-electricity, pressed against her skin briefly before fading away. A couple of seconds later it cycled back again, brushing against her hand like a shy caress. With wide eyes she traced the ebbing flow with her hand, following the current down his slender neck to the center of his chest.

Of course! That was the source of the problem, his chakra coils! Her palm hovered over his slick skin, steady and unshaking. Now if she could just…

Sakura closed her eyes, mentally rejecting the worried cries and the jostling press of bodies around her, and focused on tracing his chakra flow with her mind's eye.

The young medic imagined that she could see his pure translucent-blue life energy sparkling through his chakra pathways, rushing out quickly one moment and lulling down into a thin trickle the next.

…

She had never seen chakra flow like this. It was completely unheard of in the medical world.

For one wild moment Sakura allowed herself to desperately wish that Tsunade-shishou was in her place-that she could just curl up in a corner and cry while someone else took care of it...

But the Hokage wasn't here right now.

And Kakashi was dying.

Sakura pressed her lips together and forced her mind to search for a solution, ignoring the wild flurries of fear beating around inside her chest.

She thought about his sharingan, how it flickered to life with the surges of chakra and then petered out into black again when the wave of energy had passed. To have a kekkei genkai, that didn't even originally belong to one's body, switching constantly on and off at such a rapid pace-it would have to put a tremendous strain on the body…

Enough strain to cause a dangerously high fever and a persistent bout of seizures.

Sakura's eyes snapped open. If she could somehow regulate his chakra flow his heart-rate might slow down, and his fever and seizures go away!

But how could she do that? Her head reeled desperately as she racked her memory, searching in her vast stores of medical knowledge for some way to do it. _Think! Think! _

Seconds passed, and a slow, aching burn had started in her throat, her eyes smarting as she strained herself, scouring her mind for the answer.

But, as the machines beeped warning sirens around her and the fleet of medical personnel scurried over the tiled floor, their uniform shoes squeaking frantically-it soon became apparent to Sakura that she had absolutely no idea.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.

There were no medical observations or theories to fall back on.

She was on her own. She was on her own and she had to think of something, she had to find a solution because Kakashi was-

"The bath is ready! We used the water from the cafeteria, just like you-"

"Good. He's almost ready." The head nurse knocked away the hands of two young nurses fumbling nervously with Kakashi's pants button and zipper.

Without any hesitation or gentleness, her hands fisted in his waistband and, with one powerful jerk, his pants were yanked down to pool around his ankles. A loud ripping noise tore through the air and the small button popped off with the force of her tug, arcing through the air wildly.

It was almost comical really, in a surreal, horrifying way, to see him like this-lying limply on his back with his shirt torn open to his chin, his arms tossed up over his head as if he were falling down some enormous slide, his pants tangled around his sandals, his leg-wrappings and underwear glaringly obvious under the harsh overhead light.

Sakrua might have even laughed, if he hadn't looked so much smaller lying there, stripped of his dignity and clothes, spread-eagled on the twisted, sweaty hospital sheets, his lean body still shuddering with the after-effects of seizures even in unconscious.

She watched with a dizzy sort of detachment as the nurses gathered around his cot and burrowed their hands under him and began to lift him from the crumpled sheets.

She ground her teeth together and tried to breathe slowly, closing her eyes. This was just too much-why, why was it all happening at once?

Her throat tightened and she wanted to cry from the stress and the helplessness, from the unfairness of it all. How was she supposed to fix this?

For the first time she found herself being the one who had to make the calls and save the day, the one who took it all on herself and brought everything together in the end… She was in Kakashi's place and he in hers.

How many times had he protected her or rescued her? So many times that she had come to simply expect it of him. Was it possible that, as steady and reassuring as he always seemed, Kakashi actually felt just as helpless and scared as she did now when he was forced to swoop in and save the day?

Sakura was knocked out of her whirling thoughts when one of the nurses brushed roughly past her, checking her on the shoulder as she swept past and out of the room.

A tightly packed cluster of them shuffled after the woman, hunched over with the effort of carrying Kakashi's one-hundred percent muscle, shinobi body out of the room. His head swung limply under the flickering yellow lights as they jostled him with their clumsy movements, expression blank and vulnerable as his white hair spattered the linoleum floor with droplets of sweat.

And suddenly, at the sight of him helpless and unmoving in their hands, her wild fear was replaced with something slower and sadder. _Kakashi... _

He was always so strong.

Never showing even the smallest expression of pain or fear-regardless of the odds. He was always pushing her to be stronger, carrying or protecting her when she wasn't quite strong enough. For Sakura, he was a solid wall that was always one comforting step behind her, ready and waiting for her to fall back onto him whenever she stumbled.

Never in her life could she have ever imagined _him_ needing _her_.

It wasn't that she still thought of herself as a lower rank than him. No, her level of prowess matched and even exceeded him in some areas. It was just that, over the years and countless missions, she had fallen for his act.

She had started to think of him as invincible-an unstoppable force of will that was hardly even human.

But, it was painfully clear to her now-the man lying on the cusp of death before her was not him.

She admired, respected, and maybe sometimes even loved her sensei's fierce, dependable warrior persona. But...

This Kakashi, vulnerable and human in his pain, was all the more precious.

She had to save him.

...

* * *

...

"Naruto, calm down!"

Shikamaru watched as Yamato grabbed desperately at Naruto's shoulders, only to be shaken roughly off as the Jinchuriki growled and continued with his angry pacing.

The blonde ran his hands through his already disheveled locks again, gritting his teeth in a furious expression of frustration as the sounds of panicked yells and strangled whimpers ricocheted off the white walls of the public hospital.

Their team captain gave up trying to console the younger jounin, shoulders slouching dejectedly in a very Kakashi-esque gesture, and dragged his feet exhaustedly over to look out through the window at the falling darkness. Ino sat on the edge of her plastic seat, tense and silent with her wide eyes fixated on the flickering yellow light spilling out of the doorway three doors down the hallway. Chouji sat beside her hunched over with his elbows resting on his thighs and hands dangling uselessly between his knees, peering up from his sad perusal of the sterile floor every few seconds to glance worriedly at the girl beside him. Sai sat on his knees before the coffee table, seemingly focused on the important task of tearing a ripped out magazine page into tiny little pieces and arranging them on the smeary wooden surface.

They had only been here for fifteen minutes and it already felt as if countless hours had passed.

The frantic sound of Kakashi's raspy breathing, already painfully loud in the small enclosure, suddenly picked up it's pace.

Shikamaru let his lids slide closed despairingly and flexed his numb fingers slightly in their cramped position under his armpits. There was absolutely no way that the Copy-ninja was getting any oxygen now, not when he sounded like that.

He felt his own chest tighten at this thought and decided to distract himself, shifting from foot to foot as he leant against a nondescript wall in the waiting room.

How long had this, whatever _this_ was, been bothering Kakashi? Why didn't the man say anything?

After they had cut off Hijame's head and sent it back to Konoha, via summoning scroll, they had all lined up in front of a very exhausted Sakura and she had healed all of their potentially dangerous injuries. That would have been the perfect time for the famed jounin to mention his ailment…

Shikamaru chuckled softly to himself as he remembered how Kakashi had doggedly bullied the exasperated medic into healing his broken pinkie finger but childishly refused any treatment for his bruised ribs.

Sometimes he just didn't understand Team Seven's jounin-sensei.

If Kakashi had rejected the healing of his ribs because he didn't want to waste Sakura's chakra, as he had so vehemently argued, then why did he bother begging her to heal his pinkie finger?

The shadow-user's lips quirked into a half-hearted smirk, he could never tell if the stoic man was trying to be funny or actually believed in what he was saying.

Shikamaru wondered if it was some weird, demented mixture between the two…

Most likely.

Shikamaru already knew that Kakashi thought of himself as having a different level of importance than the rest of his team. And it wasn't the common egotistic, self-serving attitude of most commanding officers either-Kakashi was completely and totally occupied with serving and protecting the people around him, even if in doing so he disregarded his own safety and well-being.

Shikamaru had suspected that the older man had this attitude for a while, silently observing the Copy-ninja's selfless actions on the battlefield whenever they happened to be assigned a mission together.

But it was the night of the surprise ambush that had solidified his suppositions.

Kakashi had rushed ahead, tearing down enemies with such a level of reckless speed that he hadn't even taken the time to pull out a weapon.

This led the shadow-user to an interesting and mildly disturbing conclusion-Kakashi thought he was of less importance than everyone around him.

And, this struck Shikamaru as particularly odd, if not strangely endearing, considering all of the experience, talent, and knowledge that the man possessed. If someone, anyone with a semi-logical thought process really, were to weigh the worth of Konoha's Copy-ninja to the worth of any one of them individually, then they would easily conclude that Kakashi was the more valuable.

So why would-

Shikamaru's head snapped up at the sound of heeled feet shuffling noisily on the linoleum floor.

He frowned at the glimpses of bare skin that he could see peeking through the gaps between the nurses shoulders as they carried Kakashi across the hallway. They shouldered open the door and, waddling under the weight of the shinobi's muscled body, moved into a room directly across from the previous one.

Sakura followed timidly after them with unfocused, wet eyes and determinedly pursed lips. Shikamaru frowned. This didn't look good at all. He'd had the faith that everything would turn out okay, that Sakura and the team of medics at this hospital would be able to pull together and find a solution… But now…

Naruto stopped his pacing on a dime, his spine stiffening as his head rotated levelly, tracking the unconscious form of his sensei into the room.

There was a couple seconds of shocked stillness as the door swung silently on its hinges, a tangible whoosh of air for every steady swing, and then Naruto was striding purposefully into the room after Sakura.

Nobody made any move to stop him.

...

* * *

...

Maybe, maybe an irregular chakra flow was like an irregular heartbeat?

Sakura desperately fought to hold on to the idea and not dissolve into mindless tears of hysteria as they dumped Kakashi's unmoving, mostly naked body into the tub of cool water on the floor.

A great wave of water splashed out, sheets of tepid liquid ringing as they slapped over the linoleum floor. A creeping puddle slid over to wash over her shoe, dousing her foot with tepid water that she was sure felt immeasurably colder to Kakashi's feverish body than it did to her.

She scooted backwards to stand numbly by the doorway, trying to make room for the bustling nurses as they knelt over her sensei and spread the cool water over his burning skin, desperately trying to control the fever.

Sakura struggling to hold onto her train of thought. She needed to solve this, the answer was right there in front of her, but she just had to unveil it.

His spastic chakra flow was like an irregular heartbeat. Like when... like-

She had the bizarre urge to laugh. The tub was too short for Kakashi. His legs dangled over the thin metal rim at the knee and his left arm, still partially sleeved in a thin strip of black fabric from the destroyed ANBU tank, hung awkwardly over his head. Only the sight of his neck, craned backwards to an almost unnatural degree and balanced on the sharp edge of the tub, kept her from giggling.

At least they had left him his mask, she didn't think she could bear to have his face revealed to her as he-

-like when someone's heart was failing!

When someone was having a heart attack they had ventricular fibrillation and their heart muscles didn't contract properly. The contractions fluctuated in strength, just like Kakashi's chakra flow.

When the heart beats became too irregular they used an electric defibrillator to even it out. The heart was given a great shock and reestablishes a more regular heart beat…

If Kakashi's irregular chakra flow could be thought of as an irregular heartbeat-then maybe a great shock to his chakra coils would have the same result as a great shock to the heart!

Sakura felt dizzy with relief, the room tilting blurrily around her for a moment before righting itself. She had something! It may not be right, and it was all based on supposition and frantic observation-but something deep inside her told her that this was it, that she had found the answer she needed. Time was running out and she had to act fast.

All she needed was a great burst of powerful chakra and-

-Naruto stumbled into the cramped room, slipping on a puddle of water that had spilled out of the impromptu bath.

_Naruto! _Sakura found herself grinning maniacally at him, _Naruto has a nearly infinite amount of chakra!_

"Naruto! I need you to help me."

She actually did laugh this time, earning a tearful, confused look from her friend as she grabbed his arm and dragged him through the cluster of kneeling nurses.

Without bothering to apologize, the pressure of Kakashi's rapidly depleting time weighing heavily on her, Sakura roughly pushed a young nurse to the ground and took her place.

Without a second's hesitation, she plunged her arms into the sloshing water and wrapped her arms around Kakashi's thin waist. Waves of stinging water splashed into her face and down her front as she heaved his deathly still body out of the metal tub.

Heart beating fearfully fast in her ears, she lugged his heavy frame out and dumped him on the floor, accidently spilling the rest of the bath water onto the floor with a great clang when Kakashi's foot caught on the edge of the tub.

Several of the nurses shrieked in wild disamy as gallons of liquid rushed over them in their sprawled positions on the floor.

Sakura crashed to her knees beside her sensei's sprawled form, yanking down Naruto beside her with one hand and checking Kakashi's chakra flow with the other. Naruto cried out like he'd been hurt, not understanding why she was acting this way. It was clear that he thought she had lost her mind and didn't understand that she was trying to help Kakashi-but there wasn't enough time to really explain.

He tried to struggle out of her grip, but Sakura's hand remained steadfastly fisted in his shirt, holding him in place. She strained her senses, looking for any trace of Kakashi's light, prickling chakra. His heart fluttered rapidly beneath the palm of her hand.

_There! _Kakashi's chakra flow was faint and sometimes non-existent, but it was there!

"Sakura! What are you doing?" Naruto cried.

Ignoring him, Sakura used her chakra strengthened hands to grab Naruto's wrists in a crushing grip and pinned them to Kakashi's motionless chest.

"Sakura! Don't-"

"When I count to three I want you to send the biggest rush of chakra that you can out of your hands and into his chest, okay?" she interrupted him in a tense, low voice.

Naruto blinked, his face pale and scared looking as tears spilled down his whiskered cheeks. Nurses shrieked and wailed around them, the splashing of water ringing distantly in Sakura's ears.

"One." Sakura moved her other hand to hover over Kakashi's closed sharingan.

"B-But, he's-"

"Two." Naruto stilled, squeezing his eyes shut as a choked sob tumbled out. Steeling himself.

"Three!"

Kakashi's back arched off the floor.

Naruto's chakra, wild and potent, jolted through his chakra and oxygen starved muscles. His eyes opened wide, white and rolled back in his head, his silvery hair spilling haphazardly over the slick tiled floor. Sakura could see the outline of her sensei's mouth opening breathlessly beneath the tight material of his mask.

She trembled faintly-there was no sign of any chakra flow at all!

"Again!" She snarled, "Do it again!"

She slammed her own chakra down into Kakashi's chakra coils along with Naruto this time.

His body bucked wildly under their hands, his ankles jerking up and down, beating a hectic tattoo on the water-slicked floor. Sprays of stinging water droplets splattered about them as his body thrashed violently.

And suddenly it was all over.

Kakashi lay still and cold beneath them, and the only sound in the silent room was the halted dripping of water plipping as it connected with the wet tile.

Everyone was silent for an immeasurable moment in time, the nurses looking on with wide, apprehensive eyes, Naruto squeezing her hand against the wet skin of Kakashi's chest, and Sakura squeezed her eyes shut, searching desperately for…

Naruto let out a shaky sob of relief when Sakura cried out loudly, flinging herself over her sensei's prone form, exhausted sobs shaking her shoulders as she hugged him tightly. Naruto breathed heavily next to her, looking at her with wide, disbelieving eyes, his mouth cracked in a relieved, breathless grin.

Kakashi's chakra flow was regular.

* * *

_Enjoy! _

_~Flintyminty25_


	15. Chapter 15

Kakashi begrudgingly reached up to grab the small bag of ridiculously expensive dog treats from the top shelf. A testy nip to the thin, sensitive skin of his ankle stopped him before his fingertips could even brush the glossy plastic wrapping.

"What." Kakashi muttered tiredly, casting an exasperated glance over his still poised arm towards the scowling pug at his feet.

"Not that one!"

He sighed, too exhausted to be annoyed, and dispassionately moved his gloved hand towards the bag next to it. Another tiny pinch of sharp teeth stung his ankle.

"No!" his small dog ordered him, "That one gives me gas!"

Kakashi blinked and shifted from one foot to the other distractedly, his arm sinking lethargically back to his side. He sighed miserably, shoulders shrugging with the dramatic exhale, and began to lift his arm again. Before his hand could even start to point listlessly towards a specific bag, his ankle was attacked again.

"No!" Pakkun growled.

Kakashi's head slumped forward and he blindly shifted his arm a smidgen to the right.

"No!" His ankle was punished again.

His arm veered dejectedly to the left.

"No!" Bite.

Kakashi's lips pursed together and he exhaled from his nose shakily, staring stonily ahead at the store shelves before him.

"No!" Bite.

His grey eye narrowed slightly.

"No!" Bite!

Two seconds passed.

No!" _Bite_!

"No-eep!" The little dog's cranky rebuke was interrupted by a startled squeak of horror, "Don't you dare!" Pakkun licked his lips nervously and stepped anxiously from paw to paw. He stared up apprehensively at the can of cat-food squeezed threateningly in the Copy-ninja's fist with slightly bulging pug eyes, "Hey now pup, let's not be too hasty there..."

Kakashi's dead-pan eye slid over to stare at the little dog blankly, considering the possible benefits of giving into temptation and forcing his pesky ninken to eat cat-food.

He was shocked out of his lethargic speculation when someone's hand patted his rear daintily.

"Boop."

Kakashi's spine stiffened and he froze. His unknown assailant repeated the action, adding a giggled "boop" to each friendly grope.

"Boop, boop, boop... boop, boop... booooop." His grey eye widened when his bottom was given a hearty shake-and-squeeze on the last, drawn-out word. _Yup, _Kakashi cringed, _definitely should've stayed in bed this morning..._

"Uhm..." Kakashi turned around slowly, the tips of his ears pinking, "Hello?" He ignored how his voice came out shaky and more questioning than he would have liked, and fixed his gaze on the girl before him.

Maybe if he glared she would feel intimidated and run away? Kakashi narrowed his eyes. But the worried tilt of his eyebrows and the subtle turning away of his head made him seem more apprehensive than angry. Shoot.

She wore a white ANBU mask, the thin red lines tracing the features of a buck-toothed rodent of sorts onto the smooth porcelain. Kakashi couldn't tell if it was a hamster or an orally challenged porpoise. Although, that might have been because of the uncomfortably awkward angle that he had to tilt his head down in order to see her face. She stood a couple of inches away from him, looking up unabashedly with her chin nearly touching his chest. He quickly jerked his hands back down to his sides when he realized that he had raised them up in a reflexively submissive gesture.

There was a strained silence where neither moved, Kakashi because he didn't know what to do, and the girl because she was... well he didn't know why she wouldn't move really. He imagined Guy bursting through the nearby window in a shower of sparkling glass and rainbow beams, smashing the awkward silence into a million shimmering pieces.

Pakkun broke the silence, loud and obnoxious and incredulous. "What the hell _was_ that?" His little sausage body bounced up and down with the force of his barks, "He's trying to buy me doggie-treats here!"

_That's my dog, _Kakashi thought drily, _the epitome of loyalty and selflessness, always looking out for my well-being..._

"Huh?" the girl asked distractedly, head tilted suspiciously downwards. She stepped back compliantly enough though when Kakashi pushed her away, open hands lightly pressed to her shoulders, "Oh, it's morse code. Duh."

Kakashi frowned, "Morse code?" She nodded emphatically, stepping closer again.

"Yeah, they said you would know it since you used to be in ANBU." Kakashi stared at her, mentally staggered. _What does ANBU have to do with my butt?... _

His grey eye widened in realization and horror-_Is she talking about-she couldn't be talking about-could she? _His cheeks flushed hotly. _But how would she know?_ _That's, _Kakashi swallowed thickly, _that's supposed to be strictly confidential information! _

Years ago, when he had first joined ANBU, his team, being young and stupid, had developed something of a superstitious routine that they performed religiously before every single mission.

Raidou would take a bite out of their mission scroll, Yamato would stock up on soldier pills and white tic-tacs (which always led to dangerous and exhilarating mixups), Aoba would take a piss right outside of the village gates, Kakashi would steal one of his angry neighbors' plastic pink flamingos and take it with him, Hayate would sleep in his uniform the night before, and Genma would give Kakashi a hard smack on the ass for good luck. It was a foolproof, albeit sometimes childishly embarrassing, formula for success. If they ever skipped out on one part of the process, which rarely ever happened, it would usually result in a collection of painful burns and an embarrassing tendency to start laughing loudly in inappropriate situations for a number of days afterwards.

Upon his rejoining ANBU a few years back they had all picked up right where they had left off, with the exception of Yugao filling in for Hayate. She liked to spray them with febreeze... but that was always _after_ the mission now that he came to think of it.

But, despite the change in membership, not too much had changed about his tightly-knit team. And that included the solemn oath that they would never, ever, under _any_ circumstance, tell others about their pre-mission procedure. This was partly because Kakashi had managed to convince his slightly paranoid teammates that, if anyone else found out, their routine would be stolen and copied and all their prosperity and good-luck would be forever extinguished.

But it was mostly because he would die in a hot flame of shame if anyone were to find out that he couldn't complete an ANBU mission without his orally-fixated teammate giving him a solid spanking.

Now he was faced with the complicated dilemma of needing to find out if the girl was talking about what he thought she was talking about, without actually talking about what he thought she was talking about. Kakashi blinked, somewhat dizzied by the turn his thoughts had taken.

The muffled sound of heavy breathing snapped him back to the problem at hand.

The girl had shuffled forwards again back to her original position of uncomfortably too-close awkwardness, wringing her yellow scarf between her hands. Kakashi, starting to get a little annoyed, pointedly pushed her away again. She giggled.

"That was-" he coughed when his voice came out too high, "That was morse code?" She nodded, and he shifted his eyes away when he felt her intense gaze upon his blushing face. How in the world is coming up behind someone and invading their personal space a form of communication? He thought about her previous love-pats and their respective sound effects-_Oh._.. Kakashi's eyes widened in mortification and understanding. _Morse code._

"I'd be happy to repeat the message if you didn't get it the first-" Kakashi quickly batted her hands away from his hips, a small girly-sounding squeal spilling out before he could regain his unshakeable, blindly confident masculine composure. He flinched at the sound of it.

Not manly.

"Erm," Kakashi mentally nursed his bruised ego, "Why don't you just... tell me the message?" _The sooner this is over, the better._

He noticed the subtle stiffening of her frame at the question and, in true Kakashi fashion, reflexively worried that maybe he had offended her somehow. That is, before he remembered that she was actually being quite offensive to him. He squinted warily at her, just now noticing that the red paint of her ANBU mask was flaking slightly and that she wasn't wearing an ANBU uniform, dressed in the regular jounin outfit. She seemed to notice his analytical stare because she started stepping backwards and stammering.

"Oh, uh-um-the Hokage wants to see you!" She nodded quickly, "Yeah, that's it! She asked that you get there immediately." And before he could begin to sternly reprimand her, like he had been planning to this entire time-she pivoted on her heel and swiftly sprinted out of the grocery store. He stared after her dumbly.

"They'll let anyone into ANBU these days." Pakkun grumbled irritably, his small folded ears flopping as he shook his head self-righteously, "Typical." He tsked before craning his neck to tug a bag of even-_more_-ridiculously-expensive doggie-treats off of the bottom shelf.

He left a mutinous and incredulous Kakashi behind him as he trotted off to the counter with the bag in his mouth, curled tail wagging in slow satisfied circles.

* * *

"You forgot to get _your_ groceries." Pakkun reminded him around a mouthful of unfairly-expensive-doggie-treat.

Kakashi frowned slightly and tilted his head at his little companion, "I didn't want to carry them with me all the way to the Hokage's tower."

The pug halted his determined waddle and stared up at him incredulously, "You don't honestly believe that? She was obviously just looking for an excuse to-" But Kakashi's loose, long-legged stride had carried him out of hearing distance. The little dog rolled his slightly bulging eyes and muttered to himself, "They say that denial is the first stage..."

A small child tottered by the ninken then, stumbling against the leash attached to his backpack. The parent yanked irritably on the leash and the toddler fell solidly onto his bottom, eyes wide and brimming with tears. Pakkun cast a pitying look at the child, a feeling of profound sympathy welling up inside him. He knew what it was like, being a leash-child. And he noticed, pityingly, that the little pup didn't seem to have realized that the leash could, by running quickly in tight circles, tangle up and trip the master.

He thought fondly about his days as a pup when he would take a much smaller and much more clumsy Kakashi for walks with the rest of the pack, all of them leaping around and over the toddler in a whirlwind of slobber and leashes. He sighed fondly, for all their valiant efforts in trying to teach the kid how to walk properly, he had spent most of the time slipping and rolling around on the ground behind them. Daddy Fang hadn't been very happy with them, even though it was his own fault that he had never taught his own pup how to walk.

A despondent wail spilled from the small child before him and Pakkun tilted his head, thinking. After a moment's reluctant consideration he placed his slobbery, half-chewed, cruelly-expensive dog-treat between the kid's untied shoes. The toddler stopped mid-cry, his teary eyes brightening. Pakkun trotted off, his brown face wrinkling proudly.

He caught up to Kakashi just as the sounds of a woman's disgusted screams and a child's noisy shriek of anger filled the busy streets. The Copy-ninja looked over his shoulder at the ruckus and ended up running into a group of kunoichi, clustered together and giggling next to the alley behind the grocery store.

The short girl he had run into whipped around angrily, "Hey! Watch where you're going, jerk! You're just lucky I-" she seemed to recognize him because she promptly dropped the yellow scarf in her hands, stumbled backwards, and screamed. Her friends all quieted, staring at him with disbelieving wide eyes.

Kakashi flinched at the loud noise and tripped over Pakkun who had, loyally and in a most timely fashion, appeared between his legs. He shook himself free of his master's unstable appendages and stalked forwards, growling dangerously at the petrified girl. It was the same one from the store!

A strong feeling of righteous protectiveness surged up inside his little chest and he stomped towards her as menacingly as possible, his wrinkled face contorted into a frightening, demonic snarl. All this reminiscing about when Kakashi had been Baby-Fang, with those big watery human eyes, soft white peach-fuzz, and little grabby fingers, only intensified the feeling. He would show her to sneak up on his master! He would-

"Hey!" The Copy-ninja quickly righted the trashcan he'd almost knocked over and snapped his fingers warningly in front Pakkun's nose, "Don't be rude." He snatched the yellow scarf up off the sidewalk and stuffed it into the girl's limp hands, fixing her shocked face with an apologetic grimace, "Sorry." He mistakenly swiped up his loyal and, now bristling, dog under his arm like a football and quickly strode away into the crowd. Pakkun squirmed, enraged at being picked up like a piece of furniture when all he was trying to do was his job.

As Kakashi walked them away he heard a surge of loud squealing erupt behind him. Pakkun snapped and, his slavering jaws bared viscously, twisted around in Kakashi's gentle grip and started barking loudly at them.

"Stupid bitch!" He snarled, "Imma chew your face off and- mmph!" He frowned savagely when a gloved hand covered his mouth, silencing him. He glared, incredulous, up at his master as Kakashi ducked his head under the staring of random passerbyers. Like he was embarrassed! Pakkun positively boiled inside and it was a tremendous effort not to pee all over Kakashi in vindictive retaliation.

"That's it." The Copy-ninja growled under his breath, "Next time you're getting cat-food."

Pakkun rolled his eyes and mumbled something sourly around his gloved muzzle. His snout was squeezed warningly and, seeing red, the pug started coating the inside of Kakashi's hand with a thick, slimy layer of his affection and saliva.

* * *

"I didn't send for you..." Tsunade stared at him like he had his pants on backwards. Which he knew for a fact that he did not because he had corrected the fumbled mistake after a cup of coffee this morning.

"Oh... Well then." He stared longingly at the chair in front of her desk, swaying slightly on his feet as a sudden weariness fell over him. Tsunade stared at him blankly for a moment before sighing and throwing her hands up.

"Fine, whatever." She turned back to her overflowing file cabinet, "Just sit down and stop looking so miserable, I'll be with you in a second. Shizune, could you reschedule that meeting for some time _after_ dinner? I've got a feeling that I'm gonna need something in my system if I'm to make it through the whole three hours of it without scalping someone."

Shizune hurriedly wrote this down and closed her notebook with a snap. The heavy double doors fell silently shut behind her with the air of a vacuum-seal. Kakashi slid, visible eye curving happily, into the seat before the Hokage's desk. He leant forward, studiously, in his seat and clasped his hands together eagerly between his knees, following Tsunade's irritable movements with a childish fascination. He froze, realizing that his left hand was still coated in Pakkun slobber and that it had spread to his right hand. He scowled at the memory of his disastrous morning and quickly wiped his ninken's little gift off on his pants.

A cool breeze tumbled in through the open window and tousled his hair playfully. The papers on her desk fluttered about with the soft gust of wind. The pale white paper flipped gently under the dappled shadows of ruffling leaves on the desk, the tree outside of the window swaying airily in the bright morning light. It looked like the surface of a clear pool of water on a crisp, spring day. Kakashi stared, entranced.

"Thanks for closing the window." Tsunade snapped irritably, frowning at him as she picked up a few scattered papers from the floor.

Kakashi blinked. "Sorry."

He got up, feeling an uncomfortable numb prickling in his forearms and calves as he did so, and slowly shut the window. He leaned his shoulder tiredly against the shutter, his head nodding forwards and to the side to fall against the wooden window pane with a small thump. When he stood this close to the window he could still hear the wind brushing against the side of the building, rustling the leaves outside, and-

"When was the last time you slept?" Kakashi looked up and saw that Tsunade was staring at him suspiciously from her desk.

"Last night." Her amber eyes narrowed fractionally at his dismissive tone.

"And the last time you've eaten was..." she trailed off, raising a skeptical eyebrow at him as he ambled back to his seat before her desk with a careless shrug of his shoulders.

"This morning."

"What did you eat?"

Kakashi sighed, uncharacteristically tired and exasperated, "My mommy made me pancakes in the shape of cute little zoo animals with whipped cream and strawberries. I even took all my vitamins like a good little-"

"-Watch the sass." she growled, "Sakura tells me that you've missed your last two check-ups." She retaliated swiftly, "She says that your overall condition has improved, but that you're still drained and weak." She pretended to look at her nails, but he saw the way that she peered at him calculatingly through her lashes, "That you get dizzy and black out whenever you use chakra or your sharingan... It's been a _month_, Kakashi."

Kakashi sat still and silent, annoyed with the turn this conversation was taking.

"She says that you told her you were having trouble sleeping..." She paused, glancing at him meaningfully, trying to get him to fess up. He blinked innocently at her, sending her his best "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about" face.

"Kakashi," she sighed, and her hard face slipped into something more gentle, "you know that you can tell me anything." Her warm, concerned amber eyes stared at him. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze and stared at her fingernails, long and red. She waited for a moment, hoping that he would say something. He didn't.

Her long red fingernails rapped sharply against the desk, fed up.

"I won't let you back onto the field until you've been cleared." she threatened, painted lips setting in a terse line, "I can't have you being a liability to others." He felt a rush of hot shame at this but refused to say anything, lips pouting stubbornly in an unconscious effort to keep from biting them. Frowning fiercely at the wooden desk between them, he missed the furious look that passed over her face.

"I know there's something else that's bothering you." she hissed, "And I also know that you're too much of a prideful ass to ask for help." His grey eye flashed up to meet hers, steely and hard, but she continued undeterred, "The last thing either of us want is for your problems to hurt or hinder someone else. But you need to understand. Keeping these things to yourself because you think that it will only affect you is wrong..."

"You of all people should know that... Kashi-kun."

For some reason he bristled at the motherly caress in her voice, at the childhood nickname. His face felt hot and the hand clenching his headband trembled. Who was she to try and coddle him? He was her soldier. He killed people for her.

Tsunade held his rebellious glare for a handful of tense seconds before he lowered his eyes, guilty and submissive. He felt tired, so very, very tired, and she was just trying to help him. She wasn't to know that he had already had more than his fair share of invaded privacy this morning. He took a deep breath in through his nose, feeling shaky and unnerved with how out of control his emotions were. She was his Hokage and he had absolutely no right to look at her like that. He wanted to apologize somehow but he couldn't look her in the face, ashamed. He felt her eyes on him, pitying and understanding, and he felt even worse. She seemed to pick up on this too because she stood up abruptly.

"If you want to get back in the game before your team's next mission, then you've got to have these," she slapped a folder filled with papers down on the desk, "filled out and signed by a _verifiable_ medical ninja by next Tuesday." Kakashi was able to look at her now, the beginnings of a cheeky grin growing on his face.

She tried to hide her smile with a smirk, "That means no bullying chunin that have only a week's worth of emergency classes under their belts into giving you the okay." She chuckled fondly at Kakashi's wide-eyed _who me?_ expression, "Yes, I know _all_ about the little friendly chat you had with Iruka last fall. I won't take those papers if his name is on it... And don't try bribing Sakura either."

Kakashi smiled sheepishly at her, ducking his head to rety his hitae-ate.

"Don't smile at me, brat. " She snapped, turning back to her paperwork to hide her grin, "And get your lazy ass out of my office."

* * *

Really, it was remarkably innovative and youthful that he had stumbled upon this particular exercise. Gai smiled around a manly grimace, his face red and dripping with sweat, as he proceeded to cart-wheel backwards in slow-motion, a two-hundred-and-fifteen pound weight strapped to each limb.

"Goooo Gai-sensei!" Rock Lee cheered spiritedly beside him in the narrow stairway that zigzagged all the way up to the stony faces of their most esteemed and respectable Hokages. His student's encouragement strengthened him, and the valiant Green Beast of Konoha let out a cry of manly tenacity as he scaled the last flight of steps.

"Aha!" He crowed victoriously, his exuberance throwing him into a springy backflip at the top of the stairs, "Take note, my good apprentice! The application of-"

Gai paused, still in his dashing Good-Guy pose, his thumb still outstretched proudly before him, his admirable student Lee still yammering away reverently in a tearful passion beside him. His eyes tracked the progression of a small figure up the stairs that he had just traversed, his dapper grin twitching and his expression of magnificent pride slipping into one of disbelief.

Without bothering to remove his weights, he jogged down the steps, Lee's cries of "Oh my wonderful Guy-sensei, your youthful endurance is fresh and inspiring! To think, that you would go straight into another workout so soon! I must take notes on your unflappable enthusiasm in the hopes that one day I can be as magnificent a Green Beast as you!" fading behind him.

Gai made the stairs in record time, but he had to slow to a stop as he approached the figure, a stark pride and admiration filling his great chest at the sight.

Kakashi, his smaller and not-so-buff friend of man, was fearlessly and courteously following the Green Beast's example and slowly, albeit a little shakily, cart-wheeling backwards in slow-motion up the stairs with one-hundred pound weights strapped securely to each slender limb.

The Green Beast of Konoha felt his eyes fill up with tears of manly pride and fondness-how studious, how benevolent, how flattering of his long-term rival to mimic and partake in his own workout regiment! It was hip! It was cool! It was enough to make Gai start blubbering on the spot and yank the smaller man, mid-cart-wheel, into a crushing embrace of sweaty passion!

"Oh, my dearest rival!" Gai closed his eyes profoundly, nuzzling his face, slicked with sweat and sporting a subtle five-o'clock shadow, against Kakashi's masked cheek, "I am so honored that you would come to join me on this most beautiful and youthful day! That you would willingly share in the vigorous exertion of straining manly muscles and spurting exuberance with me! I am so-"

"_Gai,_" Kakashi gasped, no doubt overwhelmed with pangs of lively joy at their meeting, "_Stop... Stop making it sound like we're having sex... And I can't... can't... breathe..._"

"Rightly so, my classy rival!" Gai stepped back, large hands grasping Kakashi's thin shoulders as he threw his head back and chuckled mightily. A couple of birds, tweeting with animated excitement, burst speedily out of a nearby tree at the sound of his infectious laughter. Kakashi smiled lopsidedly up at him, his visible eye squinting. A rush of fondness barreled through Gai, his rival always looked at him like that, like he wasn't sure if he wanted to smile or burst into tears of merriment.

"Erm," Kakashi looked down, shifting his arms shyly in their smaller-not-as-manly-but-still-valiant hundred pound weights, "Listen, Guy, " He looked back up, and Gai thought that he suddenly seemed very young and small, looking up at him with one big grey eye that had a purplish, bruise-like shadow under it, "I'm gonna need you're help."

* * *

"Are you trying to bribe me, sensei?" Sakura asked in disbelief, her mint green eyes wide as they caught on the enormous basket of delicious fruit hoisted on Kakashi's shoulder. Gai sensei peered around it and grinned, nodding proudly over a characteristic thumbs-up sign.

"No, of course not." Kakashi stared at her blandly, oblivious to his companion's now confused, slow shaking of the head, "This is for me."

He made a great show of lowering it down from his shoulder and setting it onto her desk, grunting and bending his knees in a half-squat as if it was really heavy. He stepped back, brushing his gloved hands on the sides of his pants, which made him grimace curiously before he smiled at her again.

"I decided I'd take your advice and start eating more." Kakashi's eye curved, obviously proud of his alibi.

Sakura resisted the urge to smack herself in the face, "When I said 'eat more', sensei, I meant 'eat more' protein!" She made little quotation marks as she spoke, staring critically at his unabashed expression of complete surprise. She sighed dramatically, "You're impossible." Sakura shook her head, looking down to hide the small smile that was growing on her face.

He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the fruit basket, tugging on the wrappings with a serious air as he spoke, "Well anyway..." His fingers fumbled with the gauzy pink ribbon that was tied in a tight bow around the basket, "What was that saying? Something about an apple and a doctor?" he mumbled, frowning to himself briefly before whipping out a kunai.

"Hey!" Sakura caught his arm, just as he was about to hack away at the pretty pink ribbon. He tilted his head, his grey eye glinting mischievously, knowing that she had caught the bait. Sakura recovered quickly, pretending that she didn't see his knowing look, and snatched his kunai away from him fiercely.

"No weapons in my office..." She trailed off lamely, but hid his kunai in a cupboard anyway. With an air of someone reluctantly forced to indulge a whiny child, she sighed again and rolled her eyes before shooing him away from the fruit basket. She caught a barely audible chuckle and fist-bump as Kakashi moved behind her to stand beside Gai. She smirked slightly and carefully set about unwrapping the delicious assortment of sweet and sugary fruits from their sparkly wrappings.

Her lunch break had been three hours ago and she had been in the surgery room then, unable to leave for even a split second. Her stomach whooped happily as she finally freed the mouthwatering fruits from their elegant prison. Sakura picked up an apple and bit into it, swiveling on her heel as she turned around and faced the two grinning jounin-sensei's in her office.

The juicy bite of apple came off into her mouth with a crisp, sweet crunch. She raised an eyebrow at Kakashi, who was looking at her expectantly, and crossed her arms.

"Alright, I accept your bribe," she paused as Gai whooped loudly and leapt into the air in an exaggerated fist-pump, "What do you want?"

Kakashi's grey eye brightened, "Well you see, me and my good friend... erm, good rival," He paused, blinking vaguely, "Me and Gai here have come up with a plan for getting me in shape in time for our next mission."

Sakura's eyes widened and her mouth fell open behind her apple. Gai nodded proudly, crinkling eyes brimming with tears, and looped a thick arm around Kakashi's slender neck. She quickly bit deeply into her apple to keep from laughing as a carefully neutral expression crossed over her former sensei's face.

He nodded weakly, his eye squinting slightly like he was in pain, "Mhhmm..." His hum of agreement was higher than usual and sounded a little like an unsure whimper. But Gai just laughed loudly and yanked the Copy-ninja's head under his armpit and proceeded to give Kakashi's mop of fluffy hair the noogie of a lifetime.

Sakura grinned evilly.

"Alright," She turned around swiftly, pretending to sift through some papers on her desk before either of them could see her smile, "So, since you can't use chakra or your sharingan you thought you'd brush up a little with Gai-sensei, the world-renowned taijutsu-master?"

A choked, "_Yes_." was her only answer.

"Well then," Sakura found her pad of post-its and quickly scribbled down a note to talk to Naruto and Sai ASAP, "I guess you'd better get started, our next mission is in a week."

When the two of them left her office, Kakashi laughing uncertainly and Gai cheering and bouncing on the balls of his feet behind him, Sakura grinned.

He had left the fruit-basket.

* * *

When Shikamaru pushed open the heavy doors to the Hokage's office he was greeted with an exasperated yell.

"God help me, Hatake Kakashi!" Tsunade slammed shut a file cabinet and stomped over to grab another file from her desk, "If you've come back here one _more_ time-to make _sad_ puppy eyes at me again-I swear! I _swear,_ on the life of my-Oh! Shikamaru! What a pleasant surprise!" She laughed sweetly, smoothing down her hair as her robes, which had previously been fluttering in an invisible wind of palpable rage, and smiled at him.

He shivered. _Scary..._

"What brings you here?" She fell back into her chair and reached for the bottle of sake sitting on her desk, "Fourth surprise appointment I've had today..." she mumbled darkly around the lip of the bottle.

"I've been having some... speculations about the outcome of our last mission."

Tsunade frowned, her eyes snapping up to his face in a way that was fairly predatory. "What."

Shikamaru steeled himself, "I think that Hijame is still alive."

She didn't sputter or laugh in his face, but cast her piercing amber eyes on him, reading the sincerity in his gaze. "But you all sent the head back. It's-"

"I need to see it."

"His... amputated head?" Tsunade looked very tired all of a sudden, pressing her hand to her forehead, "Shikamaru..." He scowled slightly at her tone of voice, like she was being bothered by some needy child.

"Naruto told me that, in the camp, Hijame had an old man, Makoto, positioned under the guise that _he_ was the leader in the camp. When our team was ambushed by the rogue Sand-ninja, they used a highly complicated multi-person genjutsu to catch Captain Yamato off-guard. I've listened to his description of the attack and it sounds to me like, in order to pull off something like that, they have to have had a couple masters in genjutsu. That's something that nobody was aware of before, and I think that it changes how we have to look at things. I saw when Kakashi killed Hijame. And the information that I had received about him prior to that incident just didn't match up with the way he was acting. Hokage-sama," he paused, looking up at her gravely, "I think that Hijame is still alive and that he's planning something."

She was silent for a long moment after that, just looking at him. He couldn't read her expression and he hoped that she believed him. Finally, she spoke.

"Alright," she reached into a cupboard in her desk and pulled out a card. She scribbled something down onto it before handing it to him, "Shikamaru Nara, you've been granted fully authorized access into the Konoha, Fire Country ANBU headquarters and morgue."

* * *

_Yay! Long chappie!_

_I hope that this was a nice break from all of the intense drama that's been going on. I just felt like we all needed a little goofy break right here, and Kakashi needed a month of down time. Haha, it seems that Kakashi's fanclub has made their presence known to him... or rather not known, he's kind of oblivious. Which is probably a good thing, he has enough problems already. I thought Gai sensei was a nice twist, it was actually strangely easy to write his point of view. Not sure if I'm proud of that or not :) But all well, please tell me what you all think, getting a review makes my day. And makes me smile like Gai-sensei! Ooh that rhymed._

___To youth!_

___~Flintyminty25_


	16. Chapter 16

_Kakashi cracked his eyes open slowly. _

_A crusty film had hardened over the blood smeared across his eyes and glued them shut. As he blinked his eyes open, the flaky skin of dried blood cracked and trails of cooled sanguine seeped down his masked cheeks like tears. Gobs of undried crimson, caught between his pale, feathered lashes, stretched and split as he peeled his lids apart. His blurry, watery vision was spider-webbed with gossamer tendrils of sticky red. _

_The first thing he saw was a storm of hot cinders flurrying about his face. Each spark was a sharp orange pinprick that swirled, glowing and mote-like, through a backdrop of churning black and grey billowing clouds of smoke. Disoriented, for a moment he thought that it looked like the night sky, a black canvas sprinkled with tiny droplets of sparkling clear light. _

_Then agonizing pain ripped through him, and Kakashi knew it wasn't beautiful._

_"Sen-sei..." It came out a pitiful raspy, pleading croak. His throat felt raw, like it was bleeding. It hurt to just to breathe. The air was stifling and the smoke was so thick it could be mistaken for a black fog, tumbling endlessly over the piles of wreckage surrounding him. Each choked breath through the thin fabric of his mask made his eyes water. He could feel his heart pulsing in his head, in his stomach, and in each of his arms and legs. A dull stab of pain that sharpened with each pulsing throb. His entire body hurt. Everything felt painfully hot-everything except for the front of his head, which felt strangely numb, wet, and cool. _

_But this didn't worry Kakashi nearly as much as it should have. _

_A heavy weight was pressing against him from what felt like all sides, crushing him. He was lying on his back atop a hard, uneven surface that was littered with sharp protrusions and razor-sharp edges. His diaphragm was straining with every breath, his ribcage threatening to shatter under the immense pressure, his lungs burning. His legs were pinned in place, but both were twisted and bent. His left knee ached and shoots of hot pain were shooting up his thigh to his hip. One of his arms was bent behind his head at an angle that had his shoulder burning._

_Kakashi's small and skinny fourteen-year-old body was buried under roughly a foot of broken-down, charred building._

_"Sen-" he choked out instinctively, "Sensei!" A dark, icy panic spread quickly through him. The straining muscles in his chest tightened and Kakashi was left gasping breathlessly in wide-eyed panic, unable to think in his terror. Red spots popped lazily in his vision, mingling above him with the fiery-orange sparks in a nightmarish dance. He thrashed about wildly, crying out in silent fear, oblivious to the pain it caused him._

_By the time he had managed to free himself from all of the broken wood and crumbled cinderblocks, his black ANBU gloves were torn and his fingernails were ripped and bloody. His entire body was scraped and cut and bleeding where broken shards of glass, rough brick edges, or bent nails had torn through the thin material of his uniform. His shoulder throbbed painfully and his arm lay heavy and limp beside his head._

_Kakashi hyperventilated, his chest heaving, as he kicked a broken window pane off his legs. He squirmed and wriggled on the shattered glass until he was lying on his belly atop the pile of rubble. Reaching up with his shaking hand, trails of sticky blood caremalizing in the heat along his forearm, he yanked his mask down under his chin. A rush of smoky air rushed into his lungs, making him cough. He lay there for an immeasurable amount of time, shivering and sweating and panting, his mismatched eyes opened wide and looking around fearfully. Hot liquid trickled down his forehead and into bangs sticky with sweat and grime. Kakashi brushed it away from his eyes and his fingers came away painted in rosy crimson. _

_The heat buffeted him on all sides. The dry air was scorching against his fair skin, which was scraped and bruised, showing through the tattered remains of his uniform. Kakashi took a moment to catch his breath and take a mental inventory of his condition. Judging by the piercing pain in his shoulder and the shoots of agony in his knee, he guessed that his shoulder was dislocated and his kneecap fractured. At least three of his ribs were either broken or severely bruised. He had a large pain along the front of his head._

_And, to top it all off, he had lost a shoe._

_This particular discovery brought with it a bizarre and powerful desire to cry-which, Kakashi scolded himself, was stupidly ridiculous and pathetic. In addition to losing a sandal, one of the straps to his vest was torn. The flexible hard-plastic porcelain was pushed up to his chin. Some of his shurikan were pricking his thigh through the supposedly sturdy material of his weapons pouch, he had misplaced yet another personalized ANBU mask, and he was pretty sure that there was an embarrassingly large hole over his backside._

_Kakashi groaned._

_A scorching gale of smoke and cinders blew over him, ruffling his stiff, blood-caked hair. A fine spray of ash and grit followed the burst of sweltering air and misted over him, stinging as it skittered across his raw skin. Kakashi coughed and shakily pushed himself up into a pitiful hunched position. His blurry vision carreened wildly with the movement and he had to catch himself as he started falling forwards, reaching out blindly and-_

_Kakashi yelped as the wood under his palm splintered and gave way, sending him rolling and tumbling down the pile of rubble._

_His wild fall was brought to a sudden stop as he landed on his side abruptly. His bruised ribs groaned painfully in protest at the jarring impact. A sharp spike of pain pounded through his head, and his shoulder and knee throbbed. But, even as his body crumpled in pain, he felt intense relief at the small size of the drop rush through him. That is, until his stomach, which he seemed to have left behind him at the top of the pile, caught up with a stabbing lurch of nausea._

_Kakashi moaned and hugged himself, trying to find some inner anchor as the world revolved beneath him counterclockwise to the nauseating churn of his insides. Once again he laid in a collapsed heap, struggling just to breathe, unable to keep track of time._

_Finally, the wave of sickening dizziness seemed to wane, and he was able to think more clearly. He pushed himself up with one elbow, breathing raggedly, and tried to calm himself down. He had been in difficult situations before. He had been sent on missions alone and with only a couple sentences briefing multiple times. Kakashi had been a jounin for over a year now, and he had a considerable amount of experience in dangerous, complicated situations. This wasn't the first time he'd woken up somewhere, having no idea how he'd gotten there. This shouldn't have been any different._

_Except it was. _

_Kakashi couldn't remember what had happened or what he had been doing before waking up, alone and hurt, lying in a pile of broken-down building like so much trash. He couldn't even tell where he was now, his surroundings were completely unfamiliar to him. _

_As far as he could see were the singed remains of broken-down buildings. There were bright spots of flickering light, where blazing fires hadbroken through the thick haze of black smoke that roiled and spilled over everything. Beneath him was the sooty asphalt surface of a road, the dirty metal rim of a man-hole cover glinting through a fine layer of ash a couple feet to his left. Parts of the road appeared to have been torn up or crushed. Large craters the size of buses and cresting waves of crumbling asphalt, that were nearly as tall as he was, marred the expanse of the street before him. Broken bricks, splintered wood, shattered glass, and twisted hunks of metal littered the scarred road in front of him. The pile of rubble he had slipped down was to his right, leaning against a slanted half-wall and spilling out onto the sidewalk. _

_Kakashi's eyes caught on a partially buried sign, advertising the opening of a brand-new dingo shop. The street name was familiar to him, he ran by it everyday on his way to ANBU head-quarters._

_A sick feeling of cold dread pooled heavily in his stomach. That meant that this smoking, broken-down mess around him was, Kakashi swallowed thickly, Konoha. The only thing that he could think of that could cause this much destruction was an explosion... An explosion or... _

_"The Kyubi!" Kakashi cried out as he shoved himself recklessly to his feet, looking around anxiously as memories of the last couple of hours flooded through him._

_The Kyubi had attacked Konoha. _

_As a junior ANBU operative, he had been ordered with the task of evacuating civilians rather than being sent directly to the front lines. He had been upset when the rest of his team had been sent to the frontlines without him, and he had been hurt when told that it was the Hokage's orders that he be treated differently. Feelings of hot shame, helplessness, and innadequacy had overwhelmed him-insecurities never completely buried since the death of his father._

_But he had gone, seething silently under his emotionless, white ANBU mask all the while. He had once again pushed his own feelings down somewhere deep inside his stomach, where they couldn't touch his head or heart, and did what he was told. _

_He vaguely remembered flitting through doorways wreathed with flame, sprinting through caving-in hallways, and kicking down doors as he searched a collapsing apartment building for a women's newborn. He had found the infant, but had been forced to leap out of the thirteenth-story window when the building around him had given an ominous lurch and a groan of finality. _

_It had been then, as he was skidding down the side of the tilting building on the heels of his feet, bawling infant clasped to his chest, that he had seen it._

_The Kyubi had broken through the front-lines-a snarling, viscious mess of snapping teeth and whirling tails, surrounded on all sides by crumbling buildings and pillars of flame. Gamabunta, Minato-sensei's enormous frog-summon, sprang up before the monster in a swirling cloud of dust, the distant figure of the white-robed Hokage perched on his head. By the time Kakashi had landed, rolling, on the street below, he had already made up his mind._

_Pausing only to deliver the screaming child into the arms of a tearful woman, Kakashi sprinted up the nearest building and starting traversing the rooftops, racing towards the Kyubi. He had willfully abandoned his ANBU post, disobeying a direct order given to him by a superiour. This was a strict violation of shinobi conduct and was a crime that could warrant the full stripping of ranks and, on the rare occasion, result in banishment. But none of this had mattered-the fact that his only source of income, the only thing keeping him off the streets, was thrown carelessly aside. It hardly registered. _

_The only thing he could think about was that his sensei, the man who had raised him, protected him, and loved him, was in danger. It didn't even occur to him that he was only a fourteen-year-old kid-a kid who didn't know what to do when girls would giggle and blush behind their hands as he walked by, much less how to stop the Kyubi._

_All he knew was that Minato-sensei was in danger and that he had to help him._

_Kakashi vaguely recalled feeling a sort of anxious, terrified determination as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop, approaching the spitting nine-tailed demon with all the speed his fourteen-year-old body could muster. Even as he had raced towards the monster he had been unable to look away from the tall, white-robed figure of his sensei, standing strong and straight-backed upon Gamabunta's head. He remembered calling out his sensei's name desperately as he came parallel with the man who had practically raised him. _

_And then a great wall of orange fur and searing heat had cut through the building before him. _

_There had been a loud noise of cracking stone, splintering wood, and shattering glass. A powerful rush of hot air had sent him hurtling backwards, chunks of broken building and smoke swirling around him. And then-_

_Kakashi shook himself out of his reverie, wide eyes focusing back to the devastation around him. A slow type of budding horror was building within him. The Kyubi was gone. His sensei's frog-summon was gone. The buildings around him were nothing more than smoldering piles of ruin. He had woken up alone, his sensei hadn't come to help him. His sensei..._

_Sweaty, matted white locks, stained pink and red, whipped about his face as he turned his head, peering desperately through the smoke. Kakashi forced his itching eyes to open wide, looking through his sharingan for some flicker of chakra and his other for some sign of his sensei. His breathing picked up, making him cough harshly, at the sudden flash of white that flutter weakly in of the corner of his eye. He turned his head and craned his neck to see around a small mountain of crushed cinderblock and charred wood that had spilled out onto the street._

_Kakashi cried out loudly as his eyes focused in on the sight._

_Lying on his back with his upper torso bent backwards and disappearing into a shallow crater of slowly steaming asphalt, one of his legs bent at the knee and the other twisted in a broken angle, his white Hokage robes fluttering in silence about his still form, was Kakashi's sensei. _

_"Sensei! Sensei!" Kakashi quickly shoved himself to his knees and scrambled, with bloody hands and a fractured kneecap, towards the broken form. He scrabbled blindly through the shattered glass, nails, and splintered wood that littered the wood-oblivious to the pain._

_Kakashi tumbled bodily into the miniature asphalt crater, skidding on his side roughly before clawing his way up to the Hokage's side. He kneeled there, his head reeling, and struggled to breathe around the heavy lump in his throat._

_"Minato-sensei..." _

_His teacher's name tumbled out of his chapped lips as a harsh, broken whimper. He tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry and tight, and he ended up choking back a sob. He fisted his hand against his side, bloody half-gloved fingers clenched tremulously an inch away from the pale, limp open hand in front of him. He ducked his head, catching his wobbling lower lip with his teeth, and squeezed his eyes shut hard, trembling._

_Kakashi wasn't stupid and he wasn't six years old. He knew his sensei was dead._

_Slowly, flinchingly, he forced himself to raise his glistening eyes up to the face of his teacher. When he did, a sensation very much like being punched in the stomach came over him, and he was left gasping, open-mouthed, for air._

_Minato was looking back up at him with those blue eyes. _

_A fine layer of ash had sprinkled lightly over his blonde lashes. The dust and grit had mingled with a few beads of moisture that had gathered in the corners of his eyes, forming cloudy droplets that slid smoothly down tan cheeks. Kakashi tried to close his eyes against that stare, but he couldn't look away, held captive by the blue of the man's eyes. _

_It had always been the softest of blues. _

_A calm, reassuring, understanding color. Swathes of soothing sky-blue that twinkled with an inner radiance, an unshakable crystalline resolve that glinted through the glowing turqoise. For years those oceanic blue depths had been a home to him. The promising shade of freedom from his father's dark shadow. The comforting cerulean hue of unquestionable acceptance and protection. _

_But now... now..._

_Kakashi made a strangled choking noise, his mouth wet and ashy. His bruised and sooty face contorted into an expression of horrified, disbelieving agony. His dirty fingers snarled shakily through his stiff blood-crusted hair, torn fingernails raking raggedly along his scalp. Tremors wracked his body, his every muscle clenched tightly, desperately, against the sobs that threatened to break free. _

_His sensei's azure orbs were glassy and dull. _

Obito was crying when Kakashi woke up.

It was cold, lying there in his dark room with his sheets tangled around him. Kakashi lay on his back for a few moments and just looked at the ceiling, a delicate sky-blue glow still following his blank gaze as his eyes traced the white surface. He stared, unblinking, till the color faded completely.

He rolled over onto his side, kicking his sweaty sheets off wearily, and checked the clock on his desk. The glowing green numbers 2:17 glared back at him, their sharp light threatening to give him a head-ache. Kakashi groaned, frowning back at the obnoxious neon light with heavy, half-lidded eyes for a moment before exhaling a harsh sigh of defeat. He swiftly rolled onto his stomach and let his head fall with a dramatic plop into the fluffy softness of his pillow. His forehead knocked loudly against the head-board on the way down.

Kakashi let out a frustrated groan that trailed off into an pitiful whine.

All he wanted-the only thing that he longed for on this God-given, green Earth-was just to _sleep_! A couple minutes rest without seeing the dead faces of his family and friends, a few _seconds_, was all he asked for. But no, he hadn't had a dreamless sleep since his last mission.

Kakashi expelled himself angrily from his messy bed with a resentful shove, ignoring Obito's tears as they dried on his cheek. He knew there was no point trying to sleep now. He would just end up lying in his too-cold bed for hours upon hours, staring pleadingly at his indifferent ceiling, wishing for sleep to come. And then, when hours on top of restless hours had passed, Obito would succumb to restless tears of frustration. The cry-baby.

Kakashi hissed when his bare feet came into contact with the icy coldness of his hard wooden floor-boards, curling his toes against the chill. It was a shame he couldn't stand going into bed wearing socks and that he thought slippers were for grannies.

Kakashi grunted, rolling his shoulders, _I guess this is the price you pay for manliness._

He meticulously checked the health and general well-being of his collection of potted plants, who were all flowering nicely, on his window-sill before moving over to his closet.

Kakashi was a little worried about Mr. Ukki. Three days ago he had accidently fed him the wrong plant feed, _and_, on top of that, had been forced to give the plant bottled water. This may not seem like such a big problem to the random passerby, but Kakashi was experienced enough in these matters to know that it was grave mistake. Mr. Ukki was used to the rich water from the tap, which was visibly enhanced with many colorful nutrients and vitamins. The Copy-ninja sighed, sorely disappointed that his landlord had been knuckled into fixing the faulty plumbing in the kitchen area of the apartment complex.

Jerking his favorite pair of very worn and faded sweatpants off his hips and kicking them away from his ankles, Kakashi quickly slipped into his jounin uniform. By the time he had finished zipping up his jounin vest he was shivering with cold and it felt like the hairs on his arms were standing up under the dark long-sleeves of his shirt, prickling with goose-bumps. He shivered and thought idly about how the other day Sakura had told him that he felt cold all the time because he was losing weight.

He really liked it when the angry flush of her cheeks clashed in that particular shade with her pink locks, it was such a refreshing change of color-scheme from the normal hospital decorum of bland, indifferent white.

Kakashi made it to his doorway, gloved hand on the doorknob, before he had to stop. His shoulders fell with a disappointed sigh and he stared wryly at his toes for a moment before pivoting on his heel to face his apartment room again. _It's like an itch..._

He casually swiped up the trousers that he had purposefully left in a crumpled heap on his dustless, wooden floor. He folded them swiftly over his forearm and then stacked them on top of one of the neat pillars of folded clothes in his hamper. He made his bed in a matter of seconds with military precision and then he stepped back into the center of his one-room apartment.

Kakashi bit his bottom lip as he perused the room, fingers fiddling nervously with the sides of his pants. His apartment was once again spotless and organized in every way. The picture of perfection.

"Well shit..."

At some point in the last few weeks, Kakashi had noticed that his childhood compulsion to fix and arrange things until they were _just_ right had made an inopportune reoccurrence in his daily bachelor life. This was somewhat annoying, not to mention a little embarrassing. He supposed it wasn't often that a full grown man stopped by a shelf in the department store to rearrange a bin of pens so that they were color-coordinated and the clicky-pens were separated from the twisty-pens.

But it wasn't his fault, not really.

Kakashi half-heartedly tilted the shade on his lamp, feeling unsure.

He remembered being dragged by his exasperated sensei to the hospital to see a psychiatric evaluator at some point during his chunin years. His sensei's suspicions were deemed correct and a seven-year-old Kakashi was told that there was something wrong with him, that he had a problem. Funny how he didn't remember anyone telling him how to fix it... He just remembered squatting miserably in the mud next to his sensei and picking lint off the back of his teacher's jounin vest during their next mission, when they were supposed to be watching a road for approaching bandits.

That was probably one of the few times Minato-sensei had ever slapped him.

So now Kakashi had taken it upon himself to cure himself. He knew he could do it. If he had eventually slipped into slovenliness during his teen years, Kakashi was sure that he could do it again.

Every day he went out of his way to be as messy and disorganized as possible. He had been spending a lot of time with Genma lately, observing the man's habits and playing Copy-cat like only he could. But so far all he had learned was to not wash his hands after going to the bathroom and to suck on various objects without any regard for who might have touched them or where they've been. Kakashi wasn't comfortable doing either, but it was a work in progress.

He quickly plucked an Icha Icha book from it's pile, causing the rest of them to spill and tumble out over his desk. Kakashi nodded, feeling pleased with himself. The various colors of his hard-backed collection were fanned out across the smooth wooden surface in what he felt was a very elegant manner, complimenting the lopsidedness of his lampshade nicely.

"It'll have to do..."

The Copy-ninja smiled and patted the keys in his pocket. He whistled to himself as the slightly dented door to his apartment complex swung shut creakily behind him. He skipped down the stairs, pausing only to give a friendly kick to the stray cat perched on the steps. His long-legged stride slipped into his tell-tale strut, which was more of a slouched swagger really, and he moved quickly through the night towards the memorial grounds.

He had some friends to catch up with.

* * *

"Thanks fortha drinks Takumi!" Ino flitted over and kissed the boy's reddening cheeks before turning to his friend, "Bye-bye Haruno-I mean Haruo!" She laughed at her mistake and patted her new friend's hair, accidently poking him in the eye. She smiled beatifically in apology at his pained wince, but the expression came out a little more predatory and mocking than she had initially intended. He smiled shyly back at her, rubbing tenderly at his watering eye. She giggled.

Ino loved going out with boys who didn't kill for a living.

She quieted her laughter and cupped his chin, "Sorry, sweetie!" And, as she spoke, her thumb absently brushed over his bottom lip. She ignored how his eyes slipped closed and his mouth parted open willingly, fixing her feline grin on the blushing boy behind him instead, "I'll seeyah later..."

And then, with an unsteady pirouette that she felt was actually rather graceful given the drunken circumstances, she turned around and stalked off down the deserted street. She fancied she heard a disappointed sort of moan rise up behind her, but soon forgot to think about it as she stumbled upon something that was far more important.

To her left, a couple of shops ahead, was a flower shop. A _new_ flower shop.

Ino growled. She staggered over and, her eyes widening in disbelief, pressed her face up against the cool glass. Below her nose, which was squished up against the glass at an angle that was sure to leave a significant smear, there was a collection of flower arrangements. Ino wrinkled her nose.

They were pretty.

She stood there for a long time, face and hands pressed obnoxiously to the glass, eyes narrowed to resentful slits. What was this adorable, charming little flower shop doing here? What was it thinking, stealing potential customers from her own family's adorable little charming flower shop? How dare it-

Ino jumped in fright, shrieking at the top of her lungs, when a heavy hand suddenly fell upon her shoulder.

She whirled around, swinging her arms in a frantic attempt to keep her balance, still screaming. Her left hand somehow curled into a sloppy rendition of the tiger claw fighting style, which, with the intention of pushing away her assailant, she dug into his hard stomach and twisted viciously. Her right arm whipped about in a wide, sweeping circle above her head as she struggled to balance on only her left leg, her right was presently occupied with the difficult task of stabbing her attacker's armpit with her flexed heel.

"Ow!" Her masked antagonist let out a surprised cry as the unsteady flailing of her right arm transformed into a stinging karate-chop to his eyes. He staggered backwards a couple steps, his gloved hands covering his face. Ino took advantage of this momentary lapse in concentration and lunged forwards, seeking to grab him around the waist and throw him bodily into the air.

However, her head connected with him before her arms could-a loud crack echoed down the empty street as he skull rammed solidly into his pelvis. There was a strangled groan and he crumpled around her, falling to his knees, her head in his crotch. Ino shrieked as her feet flew out from under her and her face fell rapidly towards the hard ground. She managed to dig her hands into his pants pockets just as her nose brushed the dirt, stopping her descent for a split second before the extra weight pulled him down on top of her.

Then her nose was _buried_ in the dirt.

It took a while for him to roll off of her, there was a lot of moaning and wincing involved. Ino was more than happy to lay there silently as he disentangled them, a sudden drowsiness had washed over her upon the realization that she was lying down... It was night-time after all. She heard him rise shakily to his feet beside her, panting.

"Ino." Kakashi's deep voice shook and she heard him cough weakly above her, "Where..." he panted, "_Where _did you learn the drunken fist?"

Ino rolled over onto her back, stretching as she yawned, and regarded him cheerfully. He was hugging himself with one arm, the other hung limply at his side, evidently incapacitated by her heel's swift jab to his armpit. Ino giggled at his furious glare, the blood-chilling effect was slightly weakened by the redness around his watering eyes.

"You're dirty, Kakashi-sensei." She informed him pleasantly, smiling up at his dark expression through the dirt painting her face. He blinked and tilted his head, looking a little concerned. Then he looked incredulously angry.

"Ino, did you-" his voice caught and he blinked his visible eye in profound disbelief, "Did you know it was me the whole _time_?" He sounded distressed.

Ino grinned and nodded sweetly up at him, her eyes twinkling with delight.

His shoulders slumped and his head fell forwards, brows contorting into an expression of incredulity so profound it looked painful. Ino found it to be a rather endearing, adorable expression. Sort of like the pleading look of a puppy that had just been kicked and didn't know why. Her mud-smeared face broke into a watery smile as she lifted her arms out to him like she wanted a hug, cooing.

Kakashi's anger seemed to melt away as he stared down at her. He sighed, exasperated, before carefully gripping her wrists and pulling her slowly to her feet. Despite his considerate gentleness, Ino still wobbled and weaved once her feet were under her. She bumped her nose briefly against his chest and began to back-pedal sluggishly, forcing him to strengthen his hold on her wrists.

But, due to his holding her out at arms length and both of her feet having tottered right up next to his, she ended up slipping and swinging feet-first between his legs. He uttered a low curse and quickly shuffled his feet further apart, falling into a rather graceless half-split.

Ino shrieked with laughter and surprise, her flushed face hanging inches from the low crotch of his baggy pants. Kakashi cringed and froze, a rush of heat coloring his ears.

"Kashi-sensei!" she called out joyfully from between his legs, "I didn' know you knew howta swing-dance!"

He quickly stepped over her and, a little less gently, yanked her back to her feet. Ino giggled, shaking her head sloppily. He grounded her with a grimace and two heavy hands on her shoulders. As soon as she seemed to have regained her balance he stepped away, open hands raised before him. Ino couldn't tell if it was a gesture of ready support or a sign to stay away. She smiled sleepily up at him. Sakura's sensei was cute-just like those two boys at the bar, shy and sweet. The thought made her giggle again.

"Ino," he said tiredly, "What-" he grunted when she suddenly fell forwards against him. He just barely caught her under the elbows, halting her slide down his chest, "What are you doing out so late?"

Ino hummed and closed her eyes contentedly, pressing her dirty cheek against his warm chest. "I'ma givin' you a hug..." she mumbled through slightly drooly, squished lips as her arms looped around his waist, "Yah need more hugs, Kashi-sensei... 'cause you're always so..." she yawned deeply, "You're always so sad."

He stiffened in her arms and she heard his heart stutter faintly within his chest. He seemed to try to step away from her, but she frowned and tightened her grip. Didn't he know that pillows were supposed to stay still? His grip on her elbows tightened fractionally as he leaned away from her.

"Um, I'm okay." he said quickly, his voice low and hoarse. He coughed and slowly unwound her arms from around his torso. She blinked and stared at him with wide eyes, still leaning into him. She didn't think he looked okay. He looked upset and embarrassed, avoiding her eyes. For just one second she was shaken out of her drunken stupor-memories of flickering lights on hospital tile-floors and wordless cries of agony flashed before her eyes, ringing in her ears.

"No." Ino stated, frowning up at his uncomfortable grimace with childish stubbornness, "You're sad." He seemed to flinch at this, but his single grey eye still flickered up to meet her accusatory gaze. In that cloudy grey orb she saw a flash of uncharacteristic fear, a momentary slip in his armor, before his shields fell solidly back into place.

Kakashi's eye suddenly curved in exaggerated cheeriness, "But you," he roughly pushed her away, even as he smiled down at her, "It looks like _you_ could use some sleep..." he paused for a moment, peering at her, "And later some painkillers. Where do you live?"

That split-second glimpse of the fear in the Copy-ninja's eye was forgotten upon the mention of sleep, and Ino blinked slowly up at him before telling him her address.

And so they set off, Ino swinging his loose hand happily and weaving unsteadily on her feet.

It was at least a half hour, four attempted hugs, and a five-minute-long giggle attack later that they finally reached the door to her apartment. Kakashi anxiously watched her search every single pocket on her person for her ever-elusive keys. Finally, when he had just began to dread that he might have to camp out in the hallway for the rest of the day, she found them hiding in her left pocket. He pretended not to notice the fact that she had already checked that certain pocket three times already.

She was halfway past the threshold and entering the dark recesses of her apartment when she paused, looking back at him. Kakashi raised one fine silver eye-brow, choosing to look cooly indifferent even as a thread of trepidation slithered through him at the perceptive glint in her glassy eyes.

"Y'know," she slurred thoughtfully, "you could always ask me for'a hug if... if you need one..." she paused, thinking hard, "And... there's a lotta people who love you, Kashi-sensei... so..." she seemed to lose her train of thought for a moment, but then she smiled brilliantly, "So you don't needta be sad!"

"I'm not sad." he answered quickly, not moving from his slouched position against the wall opposite. Tense.

"I don' think..." she continued as if she hadn't heard him, her voice falling to a whisper, "I don'think they would want you tobe sad..."

And before he could effectively dispel the sharp pang of hurt that stabbed through his chest or wipe the shocked expression off his face, she had stumbled into her apartment and shut the door clumsily behind her.

* * *

"Tell me Tsunade, is the term 'elite' awarded to everyone who is ill-mannered?" The finely-dressed woman remarked casually as she bent over the Hokage's desk to peer disdainfully at the untidy pile of papers covering the scuffed wooden surface, "Or," she sniffed, turning away dismissively, "is it only given to those who have somehow managed to achieve the highest level of disrespect and insolence?" A perfectly-curled lock of voluptuous raven hair was twirled idly between long, intricately painted finger-nails as a pair of thickly-lashed ice-blue eyes flickered loftily over the rigid frame of her companion.

Tsunade turned around, the movement stiff and jerky, and fixed the woman with a strained smile. Everyone else in the room unconsciously shuffled closer to the only available escape routes. Namely, the door, the windows, and a rustic ornamental sword hung on the side-wall for decoration. Naruto gulped.

"Actually-" The Sannin started, her tone one of venom sweetness.

"-The term 'elite' is strictly awarded to those who have a profound understanding of all things offensive, fraudulent, and subsidiary-so that we may condemn with all of the derision and carefully-practiced haughtiness expected of one in such a position of power." Kakashi remarked off-handedly as he sauntered slowly through the door he had just slammed open. He glanced imperiously about his surroundings as if he had never seen the Hokage's office before, his countenance one of closely mimicked lofty indifference. His slow swagger came to a graceful halt in the center of the room, his condescending gaze finally resting cooly on the shocked face of the rich lady before him.

The stunned silence he had carried in with his commanding presence spread throughout the room and settled heavily over everyone present. The rest of his team was frozen around him in various positions of cringing disbelief and horror.

The air of hushed awe that followed this seemingly impressive entrance was quickly dispelled as Tsunade, with an air of someone who was embarrassed, slapped Kakashi quickly across the cheek. He flew bodily into the book-case on the other side of the room with a terrific crash. She laughed sweetly, her face still pulled in that strained grimacing smile, and stepped neatly in front of the collapsed jounin. A couple of loose pages fluttering daintily to the floor behind her. Kakashi groaned.

"And," she drew out the word, smiling blankly as she thought, "That! Would be our janitor." her face fell into a studied expression of polite befuddlement, "He has an unfortunate tendency to forget when cleaning hours are and he pops up at the most unfortunate-"

"-Tsunade-shishou, how could you!" Sakura suddenly shrieked, her sweet face twisted with righteous anger, "I've _just_ signed all of his health forms! I can't believe-"

"-You broke Kaka-sensei!" Naruto wailed despondently. The blonde Jinchuriki, his eyes closed with despair, threw himself heavily upon his teachers half-risen form. Kakashi's grunt of pain went unnoticed as his hysterical student, bemoaning the passing of his teacher, smashed him back down to the floor.

Sai giggled.

"Do you have _any_ idea how long it took for me go through all of those papers, shishou?" Sakura marched angrily around the crumpled form of her sensei, blind to the pair of pleadingly outstretched hands reaching out desperately from under Naruto, "I went through an entire folder's worth of-"

"-He'll never see me become Hokage, or invent the world's first ramen-flavored ice-cream, or-"

"-And you would _not_ believe some of the stuff I had to fill out! I had to sign a form expressing my medical consent to his participation in sexual intercourse! That's just _wrong_, Tsunade-shisou, so wrong-"

"-and then I had to flush Panda down the toilet! But I had fed him so much fish-food that he got stuck in the pipes, and my landlord threatened to-"

"ENOUGH!" Tsunade roared.

Everyone fell silent, Sai still giggling occasionally to himself.

"Enough." The Hokage panted, glaring around at the team she had summoned to her office, "If you all can't conduct yourselves like normal human beings than you're all off the mission-and _you_!" She stomped over, her heels clicking loudly on the floor, and jerked Kakashi up by the collar of his jounin vest, "If you've ever entertained the possibility of having children and do not want to pee out of a catheter for the rest of your miserable life, then you will keep your mouth shut!" Kakashi just nodded mutely, staring up at her furious face, his grey eye wide.

"Good." Tsunade released him and he staggered backwards. Her hair, which had been whipping around her face in what must have been the tempest of her rage, settled down elegantly along her back again. She turned gracefully to regard her beneficiary, a sugary smile crossing over her face again.

The rich lady's ice-blue eyes were wide with shock, trained on the cringing form of Konoha's sheepish Copy-ninja. Tsunade saw this and quickly stepped forward, launching into the mission debrief, perhaps to distract her from the smart-mouthed jounin.

"This is Ito Izanami, the wife of River Country's daimyo, Ito Hitoshi. She has been touring across all of Fire Country during the last month and a half, observing our flourishing businesses in the hopes that she could borrow some of our economic methods and apply them to River Country's struggling economy. She has requested that a tightly knitted team of elite ninja escort her safely across the border and back to the capital. She is paying us a very generous amount, and I expect that you _all_," Tsunade turned to glare pointedly at Kakashi, who flinched, "will show her the utmost respect and obedience."

"Yes, Hokage-sama." they all chorused.

"Good." Tsunade clasped her hands together behind her back, peering at them stonily, "That is," she glanced at Izanami out of the corner of her eye, "If Izanami still wants you all as her escorts after that disgusting display." Sakura and Naruto both looked at her with wide eyes, gasping in horror-they hadn't been on a mission for nearly two weeks! Kakashi just sighed, resigning himself to at least a weeks worth of well-manneredness and polite behavior. Sai just stared blankly forward.

"Hmmm..." Izanami's eyes seemed to have never strayed from Kakashi's slender form, now slouched and hiding inconspicuously behind the others. They flickered down and then up again in an expressionless appraisal. A slow smirk budded darkly on her rose-red lips. "I suppose they will do, at least I will have a source of... entertainment," Kakashi's grey eye flashed up to meet hers, and he stared at her, his expression unreadable, "on my journey home."

* * *

"Hey! Naruto!" Shikamaru called out as he filed out of the Hokage's office, behind Sakura's bouncy, excited gait, "Can I borrow you for a minute? I need your help with something."

"Uh, yeah..." The Jinchuriki floundered for a moment, not quite comprehending the fact that the Nara genius was asking him for help, "Yeah, sure!" he brightened, "What's up?"

And then Shikamaru did a strange thing. His dark eyes flitted warily over each person in the hallway, a look of subtle unease on his face, and then he took a step closer to Naruto.

"Note here." he paused for a moment, as if deciding something, "Come with me."

Naruto glanced over his shoulder at the retreating backs of his teammates, checking to see if they would notice him leaving. Sakura exclaimed loudly in disgust as she shoved Sai away from her, nearly knocking him into their team-leader. Kakashi just quickened his steps hastily, slinking quietly down the hallway ahead of the squabbling duo.

Naruto turned quickly back to the Shadow-user, his blue eyes glinting with excitement, "Okay." he said, "But it's gotta be quick. They're expecting me to meet them at the gates within the hour." Shikamaru just nodded in agreement and hurried back down the hallway, not once looking back to see if Naruto was following. Naruto blinked in surprise, staring after him for a split second, before speeding after him. He frightened a young desk-worker into dropping a large stack of papers as he sprinted down the hallway towards the stairs his friend had disappeared down.

Shikamaru led him out of the building and out into the street, moving at a brisk walk the entire time. Naruto caught up to him, unsticking a random piece of paper from his cheek absent-mindedly as he fell into pace beside him. "So where are we going?"

They took a sharp left, leading them away from the crowded market-place. "I'm taking you to the ANBU head-quarters." Shikamaru stated calmly as he swiftly weaved around a woman with a stroller. He had taken five steps when he realized that Naruto was no longer with him.

"Wh-What?" Naruto was standing stiffly in the middle of the street, his blue eyes wide with terror, "But I didn't do anything!"

A wry smile broke over the Shadow-user's serious face for a moment at his friend's silly antics. "Of course you didn't," he stepped back over to him and, feeling spontaneous, added darkly, "But you don't think that really matters to the ANBU, do you?" Naruto yelped in horror as Shikamaru firmly grasped the sleeve of his shirt and dragged down a dark alleyway.

Several scrungy alleys later, and ten minutes worth of Naruto's desperate pleading, they reached their destination. A dead end.

The alleyway itself was plunged in darkness, sheets of thin metal and planks of wood were nailed haphazardly between the two rooftops on the buildings on either side. Thin slivers of dusty daylight filtered through the gaps and rusty holes, illuminating the muddy dirt ground, littered with trash and broken bottles. Naruto clung to Shikamaru's indifferent elbow, his forehead pressed fervently to his friend's shoulder, mumbling a low string of guilty confessions that held no more weight to them than a young child's.

Shikamaru struggled not to smile.

The Shadow-user stepped over to the single window, it's thick yellowed glass lying in crumbled remains within the frame, and peered in. Naruto remained fixed in his woes. So when Shikamaru pulled out the lighter from his pocket, held it out before him into the dark room through the window-frame, and flicked it on and off three times-he paid no notice.

It was only when, after Shikamaru knocked one sharp knock on the rough brick wall next to the window, the ground suddenly opened up beneath them that Naruto was brought to attention. He screamed as the dirt beneath his feet swirled down, but before he could leap out of the growing sink-hole, the soil had closed in above them, throwing them into complete darkness. Naruto screamed again and he found himself latching onto Shikamaru's still frame in a desperate sort of panic. He was so terrified that he hardly felt the crumbly soil moving along behind him, occasional stones or tree roots brushing against his back, much less the slight up and down motion of his friend's shoulders.

And then, suddenly the muddy ground beneath them seemed to rise, the compact dirt above their heads break open, and they were spit back out into fresh air again. Naruto, his eyes closed tightly, yammering with fear, slid down to his knees and patted the solid earth beneath him in a tearful sort of reunion. There was a low chuckle to his right.

"New guy, huh?"

Naruto, his wide blue eyes still sparkling with unshed tears, whipped his head up at the voice. A short, stocky man, clothed in ANBU regalia stepped back from his half-squat, his gloved hands falling back to his sides from their clasped position. He stepped forwards to clasp Shikamaru's forearm tightly and clap him on the shoulder, chortling all the while.

"You should've known better than to take a first-timer through this entrance," he tilted his head, peering down at Naruto's shocked expression through the slitted eyes of his porcelain mask, "He looks about ready to wet himself."

The young Jinchuriki flushed and stood back up sharply, glaring at his so-called 'friend' with still bright eyes. "You could've at least warned me." he growled, crossing his arms huffily. They were standing in a small square enclosure, made of tightly packed-in dirt, with only a softly flickering candle sitting on a nearby wooden table as a source of light.

"Ah!" The ANBU exclaimed gleefully, "Nara, you're terrible!"

Shikamaru just shrugged, smiling quietly to himself, and flashed an identification card at the gate-keeper before walking off down the narrow dirt tunnel before him. Naruto grumbled but, with a cool glare at the still sniggering ANBU, stomped after the Shadow-user. He would get Shikamaru back one of these days... No one pranked Naruto Uzumaki.

After following the thin, dark passageway through a couple twists and turns, Naruto realized that they were going upwards slightly. Soon he could see a faint, flickering yellow light ahead, and he unconsciously pushed against Shikamaru in his earnestness to get out of the oppressive darkness.

They stepped through into a large, high-ceilinged hallway, the dusty grey stone walls reaching seamlessly up to the triangular roof with no windows. Great stone pillars, with black metal lamps filled with flickering fire, proceeded down the middle of the hallway. The atmosphere was, to Naruto's distress, just as oppressive as before. The dimly lit interior was filled with shadows and the dry, dusty air seemed to smell of neglect and hopelessness. This was ANBU head-quarters?

He followed Shikamaru, who seemed very at ease with these unpleasant surroundings, along the passageway and through a thick metal door to the left at the end of the hallway. They traversed down a squeaky metal staircase, the walls covered with a white paint and the fluorescent lights above casting out all traces of darkness, before exiting the stairwell at the lowest level.

Shikamaru paused half-way through opening the door, glancing back at Naruto as if to reassure him, "It's a little cold in here, so don't be surprised if-"

"-Aw shut up." Naruto grouched, his wounded pride smarting at the delicate treatment. Shikamaru just shrugged and held the door open for him.

When Naruto stepped into the room his first impression was that it was very big, very bright, and very cold-his breath rose in puffs before him. There were rows of what appeared to be large filing cabinets that towered up to the ceiling, ladders with wheels attached to the rows like ones you would find in a library. People in white lab coats hurried around, some staring intently at clipboards in their hands, others leading ANBU through the maze of rows.

"C'mon, don't you have to be back within the hour?" Shikamaru called, and Naruto jerked to attention, his arms hugging himself, and saw that his friend had already started walking down one of the aisles.

Shivering, he followed Shikamaru down the seemingly endless aisle, watching curiously as his the jounin seemed to mouth numbers to himself and glance at the cabinets as the walked by them. Finally, they came to a stop before a drawer labeled '386B'. Shikamaru glanced at him again, looking like he was going to warn him again, but Naruto just scowled at him.

And so, with another shrug that seemed to say 'suit yourself', Shikamaru grasped the handle and pulled open the cabinet.

Naruto gasped in disgust, stumbling backwards despite himself.

Resting within the confines of the drawer was what appeared to be an amputated head. Flakes of ice dusted the white, stiff face, twisted and frozen in a determined grimace. Naruto quickly looked away, a dark superstitious feeling of that he was being very disrespectful falling over him.

"Do you recognize this man, Naruto?" Shikamaru asked it casually, but there was a slight tremor in his voice. Naruto wondered if he was more disturbed than he let on. But his friend stood stoic and collected before the open drawer, and a wave of embarrassment washed through Naruto at the thought that he was acting like a fearful child again. He swallowed his misgivings and forced himself to take a steady step forwards, and peered into the drawer.

Dark, glassy eyes glared back at him from under a heavy brow streaked with silver, the eyelids narrowing the gaze to wrathful slits. Wrinkles lined the dry, aged skin, accenting the intense frown and and the stubborn set of cracked lips. A thin grey mustache, with hints of black peppering the hair, and a long goatee curled in an elegant twist accented the broad face. The balding crown seemed shinier than the rest, as if, in life, it had been more oily and covered with sweat.

Naruto, his fingers plugging his nose, turned to Shikamaru and said blithely, "Oh yeah, that was that Makoto guy-he kept telling me all these really gross stories. Guess it's a good thing we got'em, haha." He elbowed Shikamaru.

But Shikamaru did not smile back at him, he seemed frozen, and continued to stare down into the drawer at the disembodied head. After a couple awkward minutes of one-sided conversation, Naruto checked his watch and, calling out a hurried good-bye through his chattering teeth over his shoulder, went back the way he had come.

Shikamaru stayed where he was for a long time.

Finally, when one of the lab aides came up to ask if he needed any help he was jolted out of his reverie. He reached forward, his fingers stiff and clumsy with cold, and fumblingly pulled out the card behind the card labeled '386B'. He read the label.

_Suenami Hijame._

* * *

_Hey there, sorry that it took me a disgustingly long time to update. I have every intention of finishing this story and I hope that I can update more frequently in the future. I'm sorry. Please don't give up on me! I hope that my negligence hasn't lost me any readers :( But anyways, here you go! Longest chapter yet. I hope you enjoy! Please review and tell me what you think. I'll try to get another chapter in during the week, but just in case I don't finish it in time I won't be able to write all of the coming week so you'll have to wait a little while again unfortunately :( Thankyou so much for reading!_

_~Flintyminty25_

___Oh yeah and, I just have to comment. Does anyone else think that all of those dancing guys in Lady Gaga's new music video 'Alejandro' look like a bunch of Gai-senseis, or is that just me? Majorly creepy... Dancing Gai-sensei..._


	17. Chapter 17

Sakura groaned miserably within the confines of her mind as she waded her way through a sea of tall grasses, her face a rigid mask of brave suffering.

The tall, thin stalks were surprisingly stiff and hard to push through, the shortest of them reaching up to just under her sweaty armpits. The air was thick with water and heat, laying heavily over her like a sopping wet blanket. Her lungs strained just to pull in oxygen. The sun beat unapologetically down on her, blistering into what was sure to be a very painful sunburn upon her shoulders, already raw from the rough straps of her pack. With every step her sexy calf-length, kick-ass boots sunk up to the ankle in a thick, paste-like quagmire that was the result of the River Country's subtropical climate and present dry season. Her slow progress was frustratingly choppy and halted, bouts of dizziness frequently assailed her and she kept losing her footing in the sludge. To make matters worse, an assortment of vapidly persistent insects buzzed in a loud, itchy swarm around her. Every few seconds one would zip angrily by, rough wings grazing her nose, or dive-bomb furiously into her hair.

Sakura groaned again, this time audibly. Her _hair_. Her hair was now no longer recognizable as such. The scraggly pink bangs slipping under her hitae-ate and plastering themselves stickily to her sweaty forehead bore no resemblance to her once lustrous candy-floss pink locks.

It wasn't that she was a prissy girl, she had left those days long behind her-along with an assortment of girly outfits, obnoxiously large hair scrunchies, and an unhealthy obsession for a certain Uchiha. But. There were just some things _no_ woman, kunoichi or not, should ever have to endure. And slopping through miles of uninhabited, treacherous, half-dried bogs, that smelled slightly of animal feces, with her sweaty hair sticking to her forehead, was one of them.

The young medic sighed and trudged wearily on. In a desperate bid to distract herself from her misery, she entertained herself by wondering what her shishou could be doing far away in Konoha. Almost immediately the mental image of Tsunade leaning back in her office chair with her head thrown back in laughter, a cool glass of iced juice in one hand and a horde of shirtless young men all smiling beatifically in the other, came to mind.

_Okay, not helping, _Sakura pursed her lips and desperately thought about what her other friends could be doing_._ Images of Ino snoring loudly as she slept in her queen-sized bed past noon, a shirtless Kiba playfully splashing Akamaru as they cooled off in a crystal clear brook, and a giddily smiling Yamato skipping childishly down the street as he licked his ice cream flashed before her. Sakura blinked, slightly disturbed by the masochism of her subconscious mind, and decided that was enough musing over the glamorous lives of her friends back home.

And so, childishly, peevishly, and with a cruel kind of sadistic relish, Sakura soothed herself with the only idea that might possibly give her solace.

She wasn't alone in her suffering.

Sai, the blank-faced artist, was methodically peeling the tall, sticky fronds off of his bare stomach. The slight furrowing of his brows and subtle widening of his eyes gave him a somewhat distressed look. A perverse grin crept over Sakura's sunburned face, Sai must be feeling pretty troubled for any expression of discomfort to actually bubble up to the surface. The porcelain white skin of his exposed abdomen was razed with harsh red where a rash appeared to be forming from the serrated edges of the grass stalks brushing repeatedly over his fair, unprotected skin. The young medic mentally slapped herself for deriving such rotten, vindictive enjoyment from his discomfort.

But it was a weak slap.

She looked past Sai to Naruto, an expectant leer on her otherwise good-natured face. The boisterous Kyubi container, despite his unflappable eagerness and disproportionate energy levels, was not fairing all that much better. The pant-legs of his black and orange jumpsuit were drenched with mud all the way up to his bottom. The nylon fabric clung stickily to his legs in such a way that could only be described as uncomfortable. And, judging by the varying shades of sludge, it was slowly drying and forming a stiff, plaster-like layer. Another fifteen minutes, she mused gleefully, and the dried mud would begin to crack and form miniature fault lines along the backs of his knees, his hips, and around his buttocks. Sakura smirked quietly to herself.

Turns out thatbouncing animatedly from foot to foot while playfully cajoling your exhausted teammates through one of River Country's squelchy bogs was not such a good idea after all.

Stumbling over a tree root, if such an ungainly and stubbly shrub could be deemed as such, Sakura finally moved her gaze to the front two members of their pathetic little procession. Immediately the young medic's sweaty and mud-streaked face fell into a series of peculiar convulsions, twitching between irrepressible amusement and cringing disgust.

She didn't know whether to snort in laughter or spit in distaste. She found herself compromising with a strange, nasty-sounding mixture between the two.

Sai blessed her. Sakura ignored him.

Leading the front of the pack, Kakashi was smoothly and sedately stepping through the tall grasses. He trudged doggedly through the muck with a good-natured sort of indifference, the wife of the River Country's daimyo perched contentedly in his arms. Sakura unconsciously grimaced at the was just something colossally unfair about having to endure a miserable situation while someone else seemed to be enjoying themselves.

As if the aristocratic woman had felt Sakura's eyes on her, Izanami's head swiveled imperiously on her pale, slender neck and she fixed a smug smile at the team medic over Kakashi's shoulder. Sakura glowered, her lips pursing in irritation, and glanced away in respectful distaste.

Having apparently won that battle, Izanami smirked to herself and returned to her previous attentions. Kakashi's unruly mop of Hatake hair.

Long, elegant fingers, dressed in dark red nail polish and a heavily jeweled wedding ring, threaded lightly through the thin, floppy strands. Sakura watched, her mouth twisting with uncomfortable distaste. They all knew that Izanami shouldn't be touching him like that, but they didn't know what to do about it. If they were to accuse her of acting inappropriately, she would just brush it off as an innocent, childish habit of hers. Sakura grimaced, knowing the River Country daimyo's wife, Izanami would probably turn the situation around and accuse them of being twisted for even thinking in that way. A complaint from the wife of the daimyo of one of Fire Country's neighboring nations was a slight deterrent to say the least.

But more than that, Sakura didn't want to speak out because she was afraid of how it would make Kakashi feel. Speaking out in his defense would make it seem like he needed the team's pink-haired, hundred-pound medic to stand up for him, like he was weak and couldn't take care of himself. And, she suspected, the copy-ninja's male-ego was probably already taking a hit because he couldn't use chakra and was forcing them to travel slowly. The last thing she wanted to do was make it worse. Sakura sighed to herself, but was unable to look away from her team leader, indecisive.

Izanami's touch softened. Her curious fingers slid slowly along the edge of Kakashi's hitae-ate, flicking the soft skin of his earlobe so lightly that it could have been an accident. A flirtatious smirk, that was somehow a strange mixture of condescension and mock-pity, budded on those pursed red lips as icy blue eyes stared expectantly up at his masked face. Waiting for some type of reaction.

Nothing.

Kakashi did not so much as bat an eyelash. He continued looking out at the unremarkable scenery around them with a sophisticated sort of disinterest. He completely ignored the married woman's less than socially acceptable antics with respectful patience and unshakable discipline. Sakura realized that he was smart not to say anything. He probably, like her, realized that any sort of verbal dissent would lead to another of the rich woman's conversational mind-fields.

Team Seven had soon found that interacting with Izanami was a dangerous game. A true politician, she would never fail to turn their words around and poison them. Any polite request could be twisted into an unreasonable demand, a childish whim. She belittled, talked over, and passively insulted them all-all except for Kakashi.

With Kakashi, her verbal spars were of a much more precarious nature. With every exchange of words, she sought to tangle him up in a carefully constructed web of shameless flirtation and playful teasing. And now, when all other attempts at capturing his interest had failed, Izanami had literally taken to trying to tickle him to attention.

Which brought Sakura to the more humorous aspect of her former sensei's situation.

Kakashi's hair, which was already regarded by the general population as an "intimidating", uncontrollable mess, seemed to be... reacting to the stifling humidity.

The pale strands of silver, which occasionally gleamed white in the right lighting, practically glowed beneath the resplendent sun. And his signature tufty headed, just-climbed-out-of-bed look appeared to have reached new, uncharted heights of unmanageable downy fluffiness.

No wonder Izanami couldn't keep from playing with his hair. Sakura shook her head slowly, smiling quietly to herself. He looked a little like her neighbor's poodle that one time they had gotten bored and decided to blow-dry it after giving it a bath.

It was just a little bit adorable.

* * *

Heavy, bruised clouds hung low over the parched wetlands, swollen with moisture and the promise of future rain. A thin, steamy mist simmered lazily over the fevered plains, capturing the heat of the rising sun in a constellation of tiny dewy droplets.

A heavy silence saturated the damp air. The sounds of the local wildlife were hushed into an uneasy quiet. Only the distant rumbling of far-off thunder and the occasional sharp noise of splintering wood broke through the silence.

Kakashi squinted his eyes.

If he tilted his head _just_ so, the rough knurls and grooves in the aged bark of the tree stump took on the likeness of Gai's heavy brow, beady eyes, and sturdy jaw.

_Crack!_

A large gash split the aged bark, creating a jagged line.

The wooden impostor grinned doltishly back at him. It's youthful exuberance remained intact, completely undaunted by the large gash denting the bark where a nose would be. Completely unperturbed by how ridiculously early in the day it's real-life counterpart had instructed Kakashi to begin his training.

The Copy-ninja knew that staying in shape was essential for this mission but, despite what Gai thought, he really had no desire to "Rise with the scintillating song of early morning crickets and birds to greet the start of a glorious day!"

Kakashi sprung backwards, raising his elbow in a sharp block as he ducked an imaginary blow. His sandaled feet ghosted through the tall, slowly swaying grasses as he danced away, a glinting kunai clenched tightly in each bandaged hand. He whirled and twisted viciously, feinting to the left, and then the right before landing a splintering strike upon the right side of the battered tree stump. A large, blotchy mushroom that had been growing where Gai's ear would be plopped to the ground amid a shower of wood chips.

If Gai was going to make him practice so early in the morning then, as Kakashi saw it, the Green Beast owed it to him to serve as an imaginary practice dummy.

That must surely be the explanation for why this creaky, old tree-stump seemed to hold a remarkable semblance to Gai. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Kakashi had slept less than two hours in the last three days or the fact that he was currently holding his breath.

The Copy-ninja jabbed towards stump-Gai's unprotected forehead with his left hand, distracting his wooden opponent for the hundredth of a second it took for him to slice open it's lower lip with his right hand. He dodged speedily backwards again, his lithe frame moving fluidly through the thin early morning fog, specter-like in it's grace and swiftness.

His clothes clung tightly to his muscled body, slick with sweat despite the accommodations to his wardrobe. The long-sleeved blue turtleneck shirt was tied tightly around his hips, fanning out behind him as he spun in an elegant round-house kick. The black ANBU tank and green jounin vest left his wiry arms bare, the pale skin glistening with sweat. Thick swathes of bandages had replaced the characteristic gloves. Spots of red seeped through the fabric tied over his bruised knuckles.

Kakashi's expression was stoic. Controlled. Focused.

So intense was his concentration, he appeared not to notice the pair of calculating, ice-blue eyes following him.

Izanami, dressed in thin silks that were better suited for a ballroom than for a trek through River Country's muddy terrain , watched Team Seven's leader from across the misty clearing.

She watched as he struck the tree stump powerfully and unflinchingly, even as the splotches of red staining his bandages darkened in color and a thin trickle of the crimson liquid dripped freely over his pale fingers. Her eyes narrowed in silent appraisal as Kakashi roughly flung himself into the air, curling his lithe body into a lightning-fast backflip. A split second passed as the tips of his fingers skimmed the ground, his back arching sensually for balance as he skidded backwards in a one-armed handstand. Before his feet even touched down there were three loud thumps, the noise ricocheting around the clearing .

Izanami blinked in shock at the three shurikan that were suddenly embedded deeply into the bark. Her full lips curled into an arrogant smirk.

It was the expression of one who's never been denied anything they've ever desired.

Kakashi finally stopped and fell to his knees with a raw gasp of agony. His bandaged, bloody fists tangled tightly in the tall grasses. His slender arms, slick with sweat, shook with exertion as he leaned forward, fighting collapse. Sweat-soaked silver strands spilled smoothly over his hitae-ate as he sat there, his head hanging forward, panting.

Izanami watched, her eyes narrowing in intrigue.

The outline of his mouth through the mask, slightly open and breathless, made him look young and vulnerable. Her eyes traced calculatingly over his slumped form, noting how his sweat-soaked clothes hung off of him. The thin frailness of his neck, ankles, and wrists that was normally hidden by a baggy blue turtleneck. She saw the bruise-like, purple shadow beneath his one visible eye. He stared, unseeingly and expressionlessly at the flattened grass stalks beneath him, as if he were looking upon another world. Another time.

A quiet smirk of smug satisfaction darkened her expression for a moment. And then, without saying a word, she turned on her heel and slinked silently back to her tent.

* * *

"Please sensei!" Sakura whined loudly as she tugged on the Copy-ninja's shirtsleeve, "We all just want to find somewhere to eat! Please, any old place will do!" she grabbed both sides of his face and forced his indifferent, half-lidded grey eye to face her slightly crazed, wide open green ones, "You assigned Naruto to pack the food, and now we're all paying for it!"

Kakashi stopped walking and gazed down at the medic's distraught expression with a slightly raised brow, amused. Sakura, seeing that she had finally captured her team leader's attention, launched into her rehearsed argument.

"Just look at Sai!" she cried dramatically, drawing a couple concerned glances from people passing by them along the dirt road leading into a small town, "Eating nothing but ramen has caused him to develop a rash! And look how pale he is!"

Sai glanced up from his perusal of a patch of colorful mushrooms at the side of the road, scratching the irritated skin of his stomach idly.

They had decided to rest at the side of the road, a couple miles from Kayanami Kanagawa, a little merchant town on the edge of River Country's largest river. The majority of the town rested on the actual surface of the river, held aloft by the sturdy, weather-beaten wood of an enormous pier that stretched along the river bank for miles. The endpoint of their journey, Izanami's lavish palace, lied directly across the enormous river. Normally they would simply run across the river's surface, flitting by merchant ships like water-gliders as their chakra carried them swiftly over the water, but because using chakra was such a struggle for Kakashi, they had to take the local ferry.

Kakashi had walked on ahead to buy their tickets for the ferry while the rest of them rested along the roadside.

So the group of them had relaxed underneath the shade of an ancient tree, the bark of it's low hanging branches peeling off as if the humidity was too much for it as well, and waited for his return. Everything had been pleasant, or as pleasant as possible when one was constantly bombarded by a horde of biting swamp bugs, until Sakura had rummaged through the food pack for a snack.

Now, as Kakashi looked down upon the distraught face of his team medic, he couldn't help but wonder if the discovery that Naruto had packed nothing but cup-ramen for the entirety of their journey had snapped the last, thin thread of sanity she had left. What would Tsunade say when he brought home her cherished apprentice lacking all of her mental facilities? What would Tsunade's fists say? There was no way that-

Sakura, sensing that her team leader was becoming side-tracked, quickly caught his face between both of her hands, squishing his cheeks, and forced him to look into her wide, slightly crazed green eyes.

"Sensei," she spoke slowly and quietly into his face, "the ramen." she paused and her eyes bored seriously into his own, "There's too much ramen in the world, sensei. Ramen... Ramen... Ra-"

"Okay!" Kakashi spoke loudly as he quickly broke her hold on his face and stepped away from her, his face expressionless even as the young girl crumpled weakly to the ground behind him, "Let's pick up and get going, we've rested long enough." His eye curved in an enthusiastically happy expression.

Sakura stared uncomprehendingly up at him from the ground through tearful green eyes, her mouth hanging open in stinging disbelief as the rest of their group gathered their packs and started to head down the dirt-road. How could he ignore her like that? The ramen...

The Copy-ninja, apparently oblivious to her distress, just swiped up her pack from the ground and slung it over his own shoulder and turned to slouch after his teammates. A few steps later and he twisted back on his heel to look at her over his shoulder, his slanted brow raised questioningly.

"Sakura, are you coming? We don't want to be late for our restaurant reservation."

* * *

"I think I'll get the Tekkadon Donburi. No, no the Korokke!" All of the other occupants crammed inside the small booth groaned as Sakura pressed the menu even closer to her face, squealing, "Oh! They have anko dumplings! I'm ordering anko dumplings with umeboshi as a side and anmitsu for desert!"

She promptly set down the paper menu on the smudgy wooden table, smiling contentedly up at the rest of her teams' various expressions of exasperation. Two seconds passed.

"Wait!" Sakura's eyes widened and her hands jerked forwards to pick the menu up again, "Actually, I think I want the-" The fist that had been supporting Kakashi's chin as he stared with a half-lidded, weary gaze at the overly excited teen suddenly fell to the table, pinning the menu in place.

"Sakura, how would you like to pick a song from the juke-box over there?" Kakashi jerked his head towards the far corner of the restaurant. Sakura, who had been frowning down at her captive menu, perked up at this. "Here," he rummaged around in his pants pocket and spilled out a couple of coins onto the greasy tabletop, "I'll even pay for it."

Sakura smiled brightly, "Sure sensei." She scooped up the coins and slid out of the booth. She took three steps towards the juke-box before she stopped and turned around, opening her mouth to tell them that she really wanted to order the-

"Nothing too sappy." Kakashi cut her off before she could say anything.

"Okay, sensei," Sakura nodded dismissively, "But I was thinking, I actually want the-"

"Something upbeat!" Naruto, catching on to Kakashi's plan, straightened up in his seat.

"But nothing too mainstream," Kakashi drawled, twirling a thin strand of silver hair between his fingers as his half-lidded gaze stared into space absently, "I can't stand that new pop stuff."

"I-" Sakura began.

"Hurry! I think that old dude with the peg-leg is toddling towards the juke-box!" Naruto gasped in exaggerated horror, pointing his finger accusingly at the elderly man that had just caught himself from falling out of his chair in a drunken stupor. Sakura gasped and quickly spun on her heel, speed-walking off towards the juke-box, her former sensei's coins clutched tightly to her chest.

"Huhh..." a general sigh of exhaustion rose up from their booth and there was a muffled thump as both Kakashi's and Naruto's heads connected with the hard surface of the table.

"Thanks sensei." Naruto mumbled. Sai and Izanami nodded their heads in slow agreement.

"Yup."

The waitress came and, smacking her bubble-gum loudly as she glared boredly at them, jotted down everyone's order. Naruto inevitably fell into an argument with Sai, which eventually lead to loud exclamations of disgust and wild gesticulations across the table. Kakashi settled into a comfortable silence, slouching slightly in his seat as he alternated between periodically looking around the small interior of the restaurant and fiddling with his chopsticks. Izanami fell into the comfortable routine of checking her make-up in a small, hand-held mirror, ignoring their chatter. She snapped it shut when the waitress brought their drinks to the table and fixed her eyes on the jounin-sensei sitting across from her.

"How many missions have you been on, Kakashi?" She asked casually, glancing up at him through her lashes as she peeled the wrapper from her straw. The Copy-ninja slowly peeled his bored gaze from an overflowing ashtray on the restaurant's bar and looked at her, expression blank.

"A lot." he said congenially enough.

"So, I guess you could say that you're very... experienced." The corner of her lips curved slightly in a smile as she sipped her glass of water, eyebrow quirking up expectantly as she stared at his face.

Kakashi blinked.

"So," she clapped her hands together and leaned forwards across the table, transitioning seamlessly into a professional business-woman, "You must have been to River Country before. Tell me, what did you think?" Her gaze bored into his own, innocence and sincere interest radiating from her wide ice-blue eyes.

Kakashi held her eyes for a second, wary of this sudden change in attitude, before looking away. He knew she was up to something, but he wasn't sure what she was planning, so he decided to play along.

"I've been to River Country a few times," he spoke in a low, mumbled voice, an unconscious response to her enraptured expression, "But I can't say that I've seen all there is to see." he trailed off vaguely as he resumed his absent fiddling of his chopsticks, trying to bore her out of conversing with him.

Izanami faltered for a second, her enthusiastic expression plastered onto her face, before launching into another question, "Did you ever get the chance to visit the palace? I think I would've remembered someone like you visiting..." her voice trailed off in a suggestive whisper.

"Once or twice." Kakashi answered curtly, "But you wouldn't remember me, I was part of an information retrieval squad that-" he broke off at the sudden feeling of a small, slippered foot caressing the curve of his calf beneath the table. Izanami, smiling lips still on her straw, blinked up at him innocently.

"An information retrieval squad?" she prompted, the picture of curiosity.

_Why do I have the feeling that today isn't going to end well?_ Kakashi mentally sighed. Truth be told, Izanami's constant advances were starting to wear on him. At first, the Copy-ninja had found the situation amusing, simply because of the ridiculousness of it. Why would a happily married women, who clearly lived a rich, lavish life, feel it was necessary to flirt with the team leader of her hired escort team? Was it just the beautiful woman's deluded way of thanking him for escorting her home? By flirting and teasing him did she think, in some disillusioned way, that she was just rewarding another faithful male servant for his submissive obedience? The notion that she fancied herself superior to and coveted by everyone was just as humorous as her misguided assumption that he was just another compliant source of entertainment for her to twist and jerk around at her pleasure... Both assumptions couldn't be farther from the truth.

If it weren't for the fact that a certain degree of tolerance and politeness was expected from him by the Hokage, he would have treated her coldly. Besides, a positive attitude, forced or no, was essential to a team's cooperation. And so he endured her advances, acting oblivious to Izanami's disrespectful and sometimes downright humiliating acts of shameless flirting. But he was getting tired of it.

Kakashi slowly bent his knee and slid his foot in towards him till the back of his heel bumped against the wooden seat of the booth. Izanami's eyes narrowed slightly, but her smirk grew.

"Yes." he answered stiffly, annoyed, "We didn't stay long, I-" Kakashi gasped audibly as Izanami's foot slid smoothly between his legs and pressed roughly against him. _Shit!_ He slammed his knees together, trembling.

Naruto, mid-accusation, glanced over at the uncharacteristic noise. Kakashi thought fast.

"I had the... pleasure." he ground out, flinching slightly, "of meeting your husband." The Copy-ninja's piercing steely grey orb locked warningly with her own, even as a pink blush colored the tips of his ears. But Izanami's smirk just grew. She tossed her long, ebony locks over her shoulder and grinned as she slowly rubbed her foot harder against him. His hands shook as he gripped the edge of the table, fighting the urge to splinter wood.

Kakashi found himself biting his lip in an effort to stop the vicious snarl building up inside his chest from spilling out.

Izanami felt him trembling against her and misunderstood his reaction. A superior, almost mocking, smile curled slowly over her full, rose-colored lips as she leaned forward. Her dark hair fell smoothly around her face in curtains, hiding her expression from the others.

"Feels good, huh." Her quiet, sensual purr was more of a statement than a question really, "You like that."

Something snapped inside him.

Kakshi's visible eye seemed to darken until it was just a glint of hard, angry obsidian. His thick lashes cast shadows over the hollows beneath his eyes, already dark and bruised with sleep deprivation. Thin slivers of silvery-white hair spilled, glossy and smooth, over his hitae-ate and fell softly over his shining eye. Izanami's eyes widened and she found herself leaning back slightly, shocked by the striking beauty of the livid creature before her.

She opened her mouth to say something but Kakashi cut her off.

The heavy wooden table between them was knocked roughly into Izanami's chest. All of the breath was knocked out of her in a startled gasp. The tall glass of water that she had been sipping so amorously splashed over her in a cold wave of sparkling ice and tinkling glass.

Naruto yelped in surprise as his own drink was tossed roughly towards him, ducking out of the way just in time. Sai, characteristically oblivious to the upheaval of emotion that had just erupted beside him, stubbornly delivered the few final words of his argument to the Jinchuriki before sparing a glance at his team leader. The few inhabitants of the restaurant all seemed to be staring. Sakura continued grunting and muttering darkly in frustration as she repeatedly poked the jammed buttons of the aged juke-box, completely unaware of the conflict going on behind her.

"I suggest that you go clean yourself off in the ladies room." Kakashi commented offhandedly, looking blankly somewhere over Izanami's left shoulder with a stony, half-lidded gaze as he tossed her a handful of napkins.

The thin brown paper napkins fluttered gently over her but were unable to break the focus in her narrowed eyes as she glared icily at him from across the table. Naruto, his blue eyes wide and startled, glanced back and forth between them in confusion. There was a tension in the air between them, and it seemed to grow in intensity the longer Kakashi avoided her eyes and the longer she glared at him. Sai blinked.

Finally, when it seemed as if one of them was sure to snap and spring viciously at the other, Izanami stood up. She rose slowly from her seat, standing tall and dignified even as rivulets of cool water dripped from her hair, her clothes and fell loudly to the slick, wooden floor. One smooth turn on her heel, and she was walking away from them, her steps reserved and stately.

Just as she swung open the door to the women's restroom, she cast a final glance over her shoulder at the Copy-ninja.

Light blue eyes, glowing with self-righteous anger and resentment, narrowed at the sight of the jounin, lounging calmly back in his seat with his arm resting on the top of the booth behind him. His indifferent gaze, hard and imperious despite his attempt at casualty, slid evenly over his surroundings. Sakura came bouncing back to her teammates, who soon engaged her in energetic conversation around their unresponsive former sensei. The rest of the restaurant's occupants slowly went back to their own conversations, a dull chatter rising up in place of the sharp silence before.

A bitter glare twisted Izanami's fair features, obscured by the dark sopping tendrils of long hair the hung limply in front of her face.  
Kakashi's gaze flickered up briefly to meet hers. But it was enough time for her to see the steely resolve hardening his dark eye.

* * *

"Yes, I'm sure!" Izanami huffed with annoyance into her phone as she leaned closer to the restroom mirror and dabbed at her running make-up with a wadded up paper towel. Seeing that she was only blotching the dark liquid even more she gave up, throwing the ball of paper to the floor in a small fit of bad temper.

The person on the other line must have said something to annoy her, because Izanami stomped her foot and turned away from the mirror.

"Ugh!" her eyes rolled and her hand fisted on her hip, "Yori! I don't care what he says! I'm the one calling the shots here, you do what I say!"

A triumphant smirk broke over Izanami's make-up stained face.

* * *

_Wow. I finally did it. _

_It was hard getting back into writing, but I'm glad I did it. I told you guys I wasn't giving up on this story! So, I do plan on updating, but it'll most likely be in a week or two. Sorry that this chapter was a little slow moving, a lot of it was necessary for the plot. I hope that I didn't disappoint anyone, I know it's been a really long time :( But please, if you read, please take the time to write me a review and tell me what you think. You have no idea what it would do for me right now._

_Thanks_

_~Flintyminty25  
_


	18. Chapter 18

"Sensei!"

"Sensei!"

"Sensei!" Naruto's bright blue eyes widened with childish excitement as he searched the Copy-ninja's expressionless visage. He waited with bated breath for any indication that the man before him had heard him... or was even aware of his presence.

Three seconds passed.

"Sensei!" Naruto quickly leaned back in his seat, rigid with suspense. As if he fully expected Kakashi to lunge suddenly across the table, spring his lanky arms open wide, and squeal "Peek-a-boo!".

Naruto took a deep breath, grinning expectantly, ready to try again. "Sen-"

"Kakashi-sensei." Sakura smoothly tapped the wrist of the man beside her as she ducked under the table to retrieve her fallen napkin, quickly returning to the inhalation of her delicious meal without breaking stride. Naruto deflated. _I wanted to say that..._

Kakashi slowly tilted his head towards the young girl beside him but did not deign to fully turn his brooding gaze away from the far wall. It was a long, sluggish moment before he finally answered with a low, distracted, "Hmm?".

"Why is Izanami-san taking so long in the bathroom?" Naruto cut in. He stared hard into the man's visible heavy-lidded eye, trying to mentally _will _the Copy-ninja into answering him. Kakashi blinked.

Naruto squirmed impatiently in his seat, his former sensei's slow, lethargic attitude grating on him more than usual. Days of hiking through parched wetlands under a blistering sun and humid air had quite a peculiar effect on the young Jinchuriki. Rather than the complete lack of energy and willpower that is the expected reaction to such a grueling trek, Naruto felt twitchy and restless. He had so much energy he was practically splitting at the seams.

Unlike the rest of his only-human companions... who were slumped about him in varying degrees of exhaustion and starvation.

"Ah, yes." Kakashi slowly waved his hand in a flippant, unconcerned motion, "It seems that our dear benefactress is _also _in the femalian practice of taking a gratuitous amount of time in the restroom." He yawned deeply as he slouched forwards to rest his elbow on the table, languidly propping his head up with an open palm as he calmly slapped Sakura's stealthy hand away from his plate. Naruto's expression fell at this lackluster response,_ What does that even _mean_!_

His blue eyes brightened when an appealing idea struck him.

"You can have some of my food, Sakura-chan!" he chirped hopefully, smiling widely as he considerately pushed his still-warm bowl of ramen across the table towards the hungry girl.

She did not even glance at his heart-felt offering.

"'Femalian' isn't a word, sensei..." Sakura pouted sulkily, ignoring Naruto's crushed expression as she rubbed the back of her stinging hand, "I think I'm going to write down a complaint about your sexist attitude on my mission report." She sniffed, looking away from the Copy-ninja's now-weary stare cooly.

A moment passed in which Sai offered to throw Naruto's ramen in the trash for him, Naruto howled in outrage at such a horrific suggestion, and Sakura fought to keep her expression hurt and unforgiving.

Kakashi sighed and slid his plate over.

Sakura brightened considerably. She perked up buoyantly in her seat, a wide triumphant grin breaking out over her face. Kakashi sighed but was unable to fully erase the quiet smile that grew on his face, bemused despite himself. Sakura let out a happy trill of excitement, rolling her chopsticks noisily against each other as she rubbed them quickly between her hands in anticipation.

"All you had to do was ask, Sakura." Kakashi chuckled good-naturedly as he shifted in his seat to cast a cursory glance around the restaurant, "There's nothing good that can be gained by threatening a-"

"-Oof!" Sakura sneakily caught him around the waist in a rib-crushing, heartfelt hug, pulling away quickly before he could voice any complaints.

"Phank yooh shenshai!" Sakura got out between large mouthfuls of white rice and vegetables. Naruto paused in the valiant rescue of his half-eaten bowl of ramen, sprawled halfway across the table, both hands wrapped tightly around Sai's defiant neck. He felt his expression pucker into a sour grimace. _Sakura-chan would rather eat a stinky, old-man's food than my ramen! If Kaka-sensei doesn't back off I'm gonna burn his Icha Icha..._

Kakashi recovered smoothly, his visible grey eye slipping from an expression of wide-eyed surprise to one of creased affection.

_Yup, the porn is gonna burn, _Naruto decided, _Just as soon as I finish my ramen._

Said ramen suddenly fell to the floor with a loud clatter. Sai's eyes narrowed smugly over his blown-up, suffocating cheeks.

Naruto promptly screamed in agony.

His hands clenched and unclenched disbelievingly around Sai's neck for a few seconds before the utter shock of the travesty overcame him and he fell back and wilted slowly into his seat. His wide blue eyes were glassy and numb with grief. Sai crashed back into his seat as well, his arms flopping limply at his sides as he collapsed bodily upon the young medic beside him. In a croaking voice he raspily informed her, through high-pitched rattling wheezes, that he was in dire need of medical assistance. Sakura, completely absorbed in the consumption of her former sensei's delicious, _not-ramen_ meal, was caught off guard. Her emerald eyes filled with tears and her face flushed darker than her hair as she choked on a particularly large piece of broccoli. She hunched over, gagging loudly into her plate as her hands patted desperately around the messy table-top in search for her conveniently elusive glass of water, flipping chopsticks and rice into the air.

The entire restaurant stared.

"And this is why I wear a mask." Kakashi divulged amiably to the elderly couple occupying the table beside him, his visible eye creasing into a happy curve at their scandalized expressions.

* * *

"Shut up!" Sakura tried to glare at him through red, puffy eyes as she coughed into her elbow, "You dumb-"

"No really, Sah-Sakura-chan!" Naruto tried to appease her, "You're pink eyes match you're hair! I-It looks nice! And-and all those blotchy patches on you're face... they... they..." He swallowed loudly, shrinking back into his seat, eyes widening in terror, "You're going to hurt me now, aren't you."

"Naruto..." Sakura growled, a million different ways to die written in the expression of her blotchy, pink face.

"Sakura." Kakashi's tone was sharp and urgent, cutting through their childish squabble with a seriousness that automatically jolted them into focus, "Go check on Izanami, get her out of the restroom." He slid smoothly out of the booth and rose slowly into a casual slouch that could easily be mistaken for lazy unawareness. But, Naruto knew better.

That was Kakashi's battle-stance.

He didn't have to ask twice. Sakura scooted quickly out of the seat, popping one last spear of broccoli into her mouth as she did, and quickly made her way across the wooden floor to the restroom.

"What's going on, sensei?" Naruto quickly glanced at Sai to see if the artist was in on whatever Kakashi was planning. Sai's face was blank and serious, giving away nothing, but his dark eyes were trained expectantly on their team leader's masked face. Kakashi sat back down.

"We're leaving." Kakashi murmured in a low whisper, going back to fiddling disinterestedly with his straw, "Act busy." Sai quickly fell into sorting through the spears of asparagus on his plate, munching idly.

But Naruto frowned, not taking the hint, "Why? What's wrong?"

A noncommittal shrug and a slight tilt of the head towards the rest of the restaurant was his only answer. The Jinchuriki raised his eyebrows looking about him in surprise. At some point during their dinner, all of the other customers seemed to have left. All except for a fairly large group of scruffy men whispering conspiratorially to the bartender, who glanced over towards their table and nodded.

Naruto gasped loudly, "Sensei! I think-"

"I bet you often feel like this," Sai commented, holding up a short spear of asparagus and lining it up next to a regular-sized one, "don't you, Naruto-kun?"

"Sai..." Naruto growled, his face glowing red, "If you make _one _more penis-related comment, I swear I'll-"

-All of the hanging lights suddenly flickered out with a crackling snap of electricity. Naruto, already bursting with restless energy, quickly sprang up out of his seat, kunai in hand. Half a minute of all-encompassing silence passed. Naruto fidgeted anxiously._ What's going on? Shouldn't someone have attacked us by now? Where _is _Sakura-chan?  
_

Naruto glanced out of the corner of his eye at his sensei. The Copy-ninja's face was briefly illuminated by the thin beams of light filtering through the openings in the boarded up windows. A sliver of dread sparked in Naruto's stomach. He frowned slightly at the bruise-like shadow under his sensei's hooded eye, at the paleness of his skin. _He seems smaller..._

"Get ready." Kakashi's low voice jolted him back to awareness, falling like hushed velvet upon the tense, silent atmosphere.

Smoke bombs went off all around them, filling the small enclosure with thick black clouds of roiling gas.

A small pained grunt sounded across from Naruto as the nebulous smoke tumbled over Kakashi's tensed form. It was the only warning he got before the swirling cloud of darkness swallowed him up as well. Sharp pinpricks peppered his blue eyes. He recoiled and squeezed them shut, gasping. Thick black vapor pooled into his lungs, leaving a blistering trail of searing heat in it's wake. Dropping his kunai, Naruto quickly slapped his hands over his mouth, trapping the building cough inside his smarting lungs. _Shit! _

The distinct sound of heavy, chakra-powered footsteps pounded speedily towards him through the darkness. Naruto ducked to pick up his kunai, but an overwhelming urge to cough shuddered through him, making his muscles spasm helplessly. A shurikan embedded itself with a splintering thunk in the wooden surface of the table next to his left foot.

_What is this? _Blind panic rushed to overtake him, fear's icy grip clenching around his thudding heart. _I can't-_His unexpected blindness and suffocation swept away his ability to move, leaving his hunched body rigid with terror. A jumbled cacophony of images flashed rapidly across the forefront of his mind, bright and painfully vivid.

The blazing dull orange light of the setting sun reflecting off the cold metal of the empty academy playground around him. The disgusted slant of cold, narrow dead-fish eyes looking down at him at every turn. Iruka-sensei's broad shoulders and straight back as the man stepped protectively between him and Mizuki-sensei. Gaara's slitted sleep-bruised eyes, bright glistening turquoise shining bitterly through feathered strands of deep crimson. The snapping ethereal-blue glow of Sasuke's chidori as it plunged through his shoulder in a spray of angry red. Tsunade's lips quirking, proud and a tad spiteful, as her apprentice's dainty fist sent giant chunks of shattered rock tumbling around the figure of Team Seven's former sensei, his slender frame rigid with shock. The sharp angle of Kakashi's elbow as he drew his hand level with his slanted eyes, flickering blue sparks reflecting off his steely gaze as he sprang cat-like through the air towards Hijame.

The sharp metallic clang of steel meeting steel sounded across from him. A muffled scream of agony._ Kakashi...  
_  
Kakashi-sensei was already fighting-as if the chemical-laced smoke hadn't robbed him of his sight or breath as well. But, Naruto knew that wasn't the case, the Copy-ninja had to be holding his breath and fighting by sound alone. His former sensei wouldn't be able to cover for him long. He shouldn't have to at all. Naruto shuddered briefly but was unable to will his frozen muscles into action.

The snapshot image of his former sensei's bare face came to the fore-front of Naruto's mind, captured in the split-second when Kakashi's fist was plunging through Hijame's chest and he hadn't yet realized that his mask had been pulled down. For one brief second, one fleeting moment in time, Naruto had caught a glimpse of the face of the famed Copy-ninja as he killed. He hadn't known what he had expected to see...But it hadn't been the fiercely determined expression of a man who was consciously deciding to slaughter another human being for the sake of those that were precious to him.

Naruto slowly expelled the burning poisonous smoke from his lungs, letting his muscles loosen into a familiar battle-ready stance.

Kakashi hid himself behind masks, indifferent attitudes, and apathetic slouches. But Naruto had seen the man's real face, and, surprisingly, his true heart as well. Thinking about it made him realize...

The Jinchuriki felt his face twist into a strange expression, his lips pulling away from his teeth in a demonic grin. The approaching footsteps faltered.

Konoha's Copy-ninja wasn't the only one with a will of fire.

* * *

Kakashi lunged forwards.  
The attacking ninja's kunai clattered loudly to the floor and the man stumbled to his knees. There was the sound of choked gurgling as hot blood spattered thickly to the wooden floor. A loud thump resounded in font of him. He felt the minuscule vibrations ripple through the wooden floor in the pads of his sandaled feet. The rough sound of boots grazing speedily over the minuscule pebbles of grit that dusted the wooden floor came at him from both sides.

It really was unfortunate that their attackers had chosen to use smoke-bombs that made it impossible to either see or breathe.

Using the slumped man's shoulders before him as a step, Kakashi launched himself high above the heads of his assailants. In one fluid rowing motion he uncrossed his arms and swung them open wide, tucking his knees tightly into his chest as he cut through the air. There was a wet noise of splitting skin and a fine spray of hot liquid on his fingers as the kunai in each of his hands sliced neatly through the necks of the charging men on either side of him. A heartbeat later and his sandaled feet touched down on their destination, the two-and-a-half inch wide side of the heavy wooden table that he had mentally mapped out to be two-and-one-thirds meters away from their own booth. One powerful kick of his legs later, and the heavy wooden table spun wildly across the room. There was a loud, splintering crunch as it crashed through the shins of a ninja leaping through the darkness towards him.

After all, it's not like his enemies had any way of knowing that the only difference their smoke-bombs made was that it forced the Copy-ninja to kill them all within four and a half minutes.

He landed on his shoulders and rolled backwards, dragging the razor edge of his kunai along the floor as he moved. A harsh grunt above him on his right alerted Kakashi to the presence of a now five-toed attacker. He quickly kicked his legs out, using his momentum to flip off his back and into a low crouch, and his twin kunai returned to their position in front of his chest.

The extra resistance he had felt against his kunai when he had sliced through their necks made him think that they must be wearing some type of breathing apparatus, a gas-mask of sorts. Kakashi lobbed a kunai straight into the eye of an approaching ninja, hearing a distinct crack of splitting plastic lenses before the wet squelch of a bursting eye-ball. _Hmm, looks like they're wearing goggles too..._

The tiny hairs on the back of Kakashi's neck rose at the thin whistling of air above him. He jerked his head to the side. The razor-sharp steel of a katana grazed over the tip of his ear. A powerful rush of air followed the swinging blade, the force of the blow ruffling his silver hair.

He pivoted sharply on the tips of his toes towards the katana-wielder on his left, his body still folded in a cat-like crouch. He drew his left fist towards his right shoulder in a powerful wind-up, but the stutter in the approaching footsteps behind him sent a wave of goose-bumps rolling over him. Trusting in nothing more than his own gut instincts, a finely honed sixth sense, Kakashi halted the swing of his left arm and, his low crouch balanced on the tips of his toes, leaned as far back as he dared. His back arched in a deep sensual curve that had his pale feathered strands brushing against the grainy wood of the floor behind him, sticky with smeared blood. The rotating razor-sharp blades of a large shurikan ghosted over him, the whirring blades a hair's breadth above his lithe body-The kunai in Kakashi's left fist buried itself deeply in the vein-tangled meat of the katana-wielder's wrist. A searing spray of thick liquid blossomed out and spattered over Kakashi's chest as he caught the katana-weilder in the middle of a back-swing.

Kakashi's steady heart throbbed inside his taut chest. Every muscle burned. The man's katana clattered loudly to the floor and the shurikan buried itself in the far wall.

And then he was standing, the body of the katana-wielder having been flipped completely over his own. He held the body fixedly between himself and his rushing attackers with a kunai through the back and a firm grip on the dead-man's collar. He whirled around, ducking as he raised the dead katana-wielder protectively before his face. There was a gristly crunch as the honed edge of an axe buried up to the hilt in the dead man's ribcage. White spots popped lazily before his closed eyes.

Kakashi froze when a tremendous crash of splintering wood and crumbling cement shook the entire restaurant..._ Sakura?_

The aged wood around them let out a low, creaky groan. A fine mist of dust and grit rained down upon them, hissing as it skittered over the grainy floor. A lurching, ominous crunch rang out over their heads. Kakashi shifted his weight nervously as the walls of the ancient restaurant shuddered under the strain of holding the ceiling up, sharp cracks and pops snapping in a foreboding crescendo around them.

He had just enough time to think to himself that four and a half minutes had passed some time ago, his lungs felt like they were swollen to the size of throbbing balloons inside his chest, and "_Oh Shit_" before the ceiling collapsed with an ear-splitting crash. Kakashi braced himself.

-All of the air he had been holding within his lungs whooshed out of him as a pair of thin wiry arms caught him solidly around the waist.

Before he could get his whirling head around what was happening, he was lying on his back next to Sai on the splintery wood of the crowded pier outside the restaurant, gasping for breath as Naruto's tear-stained face grinned cheekily down at him.

* * *

"What's _ha_ppeniiiing? What's going o-on? Who _did _that? Why-"

"-Sai, get in the air." Kakashi brusquely shook the hysterical woman's clutching hands off his shoulder, "Catch up to Sakura, she might need aerial support. Naruto-"

"Are we in dan-_ger_? Why did that building explo-ode? Who are you? Can you save me?" the young woman wailed, railing her fists against the Copy-ninja's impervious chest.

"Get to the rooftops," Kakashi spoke tersely, his half-lidded gaze intent and focused despite the pair of arms wrapping around his head like boa-constrictors, "I'll catch up. We need to find Iznami and Sakura, and I have the feeling they're not that far from each other."

There was a collective gasp in the crowd of citizens that had gathered around them when Sai's flying ink-beast flapped out of his sketch-pad and Naruto sprang onto the roof of the nearest building and started sprinting down the row of buildings lining the pier. Sai's ink-beast rose high into the swiftly-darkening, cloudy sky and sailed off in the opposite direction, searching the other side of the pier for Sakura or any incoming enemies.

Kakashi, seemingly oblivious to the deranged squalling of the young woman hanging from his neck with her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, quickly jerked his mask down and sniffed the air.

He couldn't use chakra, so summoning his ninken wasn't an option. The girl's eyes widened to an impossible degree and she froze, her glazed brown eyes less than an inch from his mouth. Luckily, his own nose was just as keen, if not even more so, than most of his ninja-dogs. A strange frothy gurgle spilled out of the young woman's slack jaw. _There_! He caught wind of a faint trace of Sakura's shampoo. It seemed to trail further down the pier, in the direction that Naruto had gone. Kakashi replaced his mask and the girl's vice-like grip on him suddenly gave out. She fell with a crash to the wood below, her arms and legs still molded to the shape of him, twitching.

Kakashi frowned, seemingly just now noticing her, and tilted his head down at her concernedly, "Oh! Are you alright?" His visible eye crinkled into a smile.

* * *

"Move."

Kakashi had to bite his lip to keep a frustrated growl from spilling out. Curious, frightened faces crowded him on all sides, hands snatching frantically at his arms, his clothes. He tried to take a step forwards, tripped as someone clutched wildly at his ankle, and bumped his nose into the startled forehead of a doltish man standing ape-like before him.

"You need to let go." he told the pair of arms wrapped snugly around his hips.

It wasn't in the Copy-ninja's nature to be rude. A short man with glasses and fat lips grabbed his collar and started yammering a string of questions into his face, spittle flying. Kakashi yanked his arm out of the bruising grip behind him, placed the flat of his gloved palm over the man's be-speckled face, and shoved. It wasn't in his nature to let his teammates face the unknown without him either.

Worried, demanding whines erupted into a sea of startled, offended squawks around him as the man stumbled backwards. The crowd swayed about him, stepping back suspiciously. Kakashi whipped out a kunai.

"Clear a way! You are interfering with-"

-A collective shriek of horror erupted behind him, cutting him off. He whipped his head around at the sound, narrowed grey eye flitting over the scene, searching for the source of the discord. A clump of distressed civilians were all peering helplessly over the edge of the pier into the choppy waters of the river below.

"-an old woman!-"

"-pushed in! Someone pushed-"

"-needs help! She's drowning, she can't-"

Kakashi's shoulders slumped in an rueful sigh as all of the civilians ran over to the edge of the pier, clearing the path before him.

His team was probably at least a mile ahead of him by now, facing all sorts of dangerous ninja without him. A sharp pang of shame stabbed through him-_-I can't even keep up with them, _Kakashi's hands clenched into fists as he stood there, frozen._ I'm just dragging them down..._

Thanks to his carelessness, they now had no idea where their client was and his team was charging blindly ahead into unknown danger without their leader. If he had any chance of catching up to them at all, chakra-less as he was, then this was it...Kakashi squared his shoulders and took off running.

* * *

The water was dark and cold as it swelled around him, immersing him in nebulous silence. The weight of his jounin vest was surprisingly heavy on his shoulders and back. Kakashi coughed harshly when his head broke the surface, his abused lungs contracting as a chill seeped through his thin body. He whipped his water-logged silver strands out of his eyes and twisted around, searching for any sign of an elderly woman in the grey waves splashing around him. The crowd on the edge of the pier yelled garbled instructions down to him, pointing every which way. _Where is she? She can't have sunk that fa-  
_  
-Kakashi breathed in water when a pair of bony hands clawed viciously at his neck from behind him. He was dragged under for a brief second, squirming as he tried to twist around and get a good grip on the violently thrashing woman. Long nails raked frantically over his scalp and caught in his thick silvery strands, snarling into a fierce death-grip that had his neck snapping back at a painful angle. Her small foot jabbed deep into his back pocket, hiking his pants down a couple inches on his hips when she used it as leverage to push herself out of the water.

"Hey!" his shocked cry of protest went unheeded, and the frail old woman continued her upwards ascent, dunking his head under a few times for good measure.

Kakashi winced but allowed the elderly woman to climb over him, her creaky voice muttering darkly in his ear in a language that made about as much sense to him as the chattering of an ill-tempered ferret. She perched herself upon his shoulders in an impromptu squat, beating him sternly over the head with her small red handbag when the extra weight made him lurch forwards and flail his arms for balance.

_This is not,_ Kakashi shuddered as the old woman's hairy legs wrapped tightly around his neck, _This is not how I pictured this going..._

He paddled quickly back to the edge of the pier, closing his eyes and desperately trying to imagine that his passenger was the beautiful femme fatale out of his favorite Icha Icha when the old woman's saggy breasts drooped over his face as she hunched over his head. The large group of civilians gathered concernedly at the drop-off reached out their hands eagerly to receive her as Kakashi gritted his teeth and pushed against the old woman's soggy diapered seat, lifting her up. They carefully pulled the sopping old bat onto the walkway. The jowls of her wrinkled face wobbled as she huffed, her stern mouth a thin line and her foggy marble eyes wide in outrage, yarn-like strands of grey hair plastered to her raised brow. A young man draped his coat over her hunched shoulders.

But when Kakashi tried to pull himself up onto the pier, his fingers were crushed under the stomping feet of the grumbling crowd. _Ow!_ He quickly snatched back his left hand, his broken ring and pinkie fingers throbbing with searing pain. Assuming it to be an accident, he adjusted the grip of his right hand and started to pull himself up, one-handed. A clumsy kick to the chin and he was sent reeling back and falling into the cold water with a startled yelp.

He splashed to the surface of the water, gasping in confusion, "What-"

"-Ta mo eadie fliuch!" (_my clothes are wet_) The old lady shrieked angrily. Her affronted cry seemed to rally the crowd and, remembering the Copy-ninja's previous shoving and forgetting his more-recent valiant rescue, they all turned on him, hissing.

"She said someone pushed her!"

"She said you pushed her!"

"Yeah! That's right! You pushed her in!"

Kakashi shook his head, blinking incredulously up at the vengeful spittle raining down on him from the fat-lipped, be-speckled man. This was _ridiculous_! All of the exhaustion and stress that had been building up over the past month seemed to rise up inside him, and if he were anyone else he would have screamed... Or dissolved into frustrated tears. His team was unreasonably far ahead of him, facing any number of lethal dangers without any direction or support at all-and _where was he_!

Floundering uselessly in the cold water of the river, barred from the pier by the very people he had been trying to help, the stretched waistband of his pants stubbornly refusing to stay at his waist, and under doctor's orders not to use a spark of his chakra.

He closed his eyes, trying to find a sliver of inner calm in the midst of the shame and anxiety fluttering up inside his chest.

He shouldn't have gone on this mission. Tsunade was right, he was only a liability to everyone around him. Twelve pounds less than his normal weight, fatigued to the point where he ached all the time, and assaulted by vicious flashbacks that were vivid enough to make his head reel and his legs give out whenever he used what little chakra he could summon... Kakashi was in no way capable of completing a mission, much less protecting his teammates.

Ever since he had woken up after their infiltration of the rogue-ninja camp, in that dingy hospital on the outskirts of the Fire Nation, he'd been struggling. Sakura had, after careful scrutiny, dismissed all of his reluctantly admitted problems as "likely after-effects of chakra-poisoning". She had told him that she supposed it was normal for him to have a little trouble sleeping and eating, that his body probably just wasn't used to using chakra after being out of commission for so long. That, that was why he nearly passed out each time he tried. Her synopsis would have been right... if it weren't for the fact that he had never told her the one outlying factor that was really behind his sudden weight-loss, insomnia, and inability to use chakra.

Afterall, how would Sakura know that her former sensei couldn't fall asleep or summon chakra without the heart-wrenching sensation of seeing the faces of his long-dead friends and family confront him in vivid clarity?... Or that he was too scared, too shamed to even tell her so?

Kakashi bit his lip. He was useless. There really was nothing he could do to-

-A high, buzzing whine, stuttered and jolting, zipped by behind him in a spray of cold water. The crowd at the edge of the pier stopped their barrage of offended shouts at the noise. They gasped in surprised delight, cheering. Kakashi twisted around quickly, his grey eye widening as sudden hope dawned on him.

Coming down alongside the pier, zooming jerkily along the choppy surface of the river, a thin line of jet-skis raced towards them, heading for the unseen finish line farther along the pier. Kakashi's eyes narrowed with renewed resolve and his lips quirked in a grim smirk.

_Looks like I may be of some use to my team yet_...

* * *

_Note: The language that the old woman used is Gaelic. It is a language native to Ireland and, therefore, not exactly the norm in a Japanese village. Meh, I thought sticking a foreigner in there would be funny :) There always seems to be some sort of miscommunication in those types of situations. Anyway, I am by no means well-versed or even the slightest bit knowledgeable about Gaelic. So, if you just so happen to be well-versed or even the slightest bit knowledgeable, then please excuse any mistakes I might have made. Lol. I used an online translator._

_Looking back over the previous chapters to this story, I've realized that I need to mention a few things..._

_One. I kinda sorta didn't really ever put up a disclaimer did I?... DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto, except for a few of my own._

_Two. It has come to my attention that _Hijame_'s name was originally _Hajime_. Honestly, I'm surprised no one called me out on that lol. Let's just pretend that it was all because the story that I am channeling got lost in the vast, intricate inner-workings of my spectacular mind, and be grateful that it came out on the other side with only a couple bumps and name-changes.  
_

_Three. There will be cell-phones and motor-vehicles in this story. My apologies to Masashi Kishimoto and anyone else who might care. :P_

_Thanks for reading! I hope that you enjoy this chapter and stick around for the next one! Please review and lemme know what you think!_

_~Flintyminty25  
_


	19. Chapter 19

Kakashi allowed himself a wry, dread-filled grimace as he chanced a glance down between his loosely hanging legs. He wasn't sure what made him more uncomfortable-the fact that he was currently in the process of climbing the outside of a three-story ferry ship without chakra, or that the waistband of his pants was doing it's darndest to acquaint itself with his thighs.

_This may not have been one of my better ideas..._

Gritting his teeth, the Copy-ninja ignored the ear-grating noise of the incredulous, entertained crowd behind him. He steadily pulled himself up the slippery surface of the ship, hissing in pain whenever he was forced to make an impromptu grab at the thin ledge of a window or the sharp cutting steel of a grate with his broken fingers.

His lips pursed as the thin whirring sound of yet another jet-ski reached his ears. _That was number six... seven?_ The sound spurred him to quicken his pace. Both gloved hands and sandaled feet scrabbled against the slick porcelain-white surface of the ship as he quickened his ascent.

In his haste he put too much weight on his crippled hand and, at the last second, had to catch himself with his other one. His sandaled feet slid from their perch and his legs swung wildly out over the churning water. His pants lurched to his knees.

_... Damn._

Kakashi grimaced. Being a naturally proud creature, it always took a staggered moment for the Copy-ninja to fully appreciate the gravity of such embarrassment. Regardless of general supposition and public opinion, he actually was just as susceptible to the full spectrum of human emotion as any other warm-blooded, food-processing primate. The fact that he had made a habit of publicly parading his devotion to smutty romance novels up and down Konoha's child-riddled streets did not fully negate his ability to experience feelings like shame or timidity.

Hence one of the Copy-ninja's many reasons for donning his characteristic mask. Kakashi was actually quite partial to his face's trademark layer of thin, comfortable badass motherfuckerness because it covered up any fleeting expressions of insecurity, self-doubt, or shyness... Not that he ever really felt that... way...

Was that flickering flash of bright light over his shoulder someone's _camera_?

_I'm starting to think,_ Kakashi mused with a mildly horrified sense of detachment, _that this compulsive need I have to destroy whatever scrap of dignity I've managed to salvage over the years might indicate some inherent fundamental flaw in my character design._ Shrieks of giggled laughter echoed loudly behind him. _Could be that I'm just a really good-hearted, altruistic person?..._ he tried to console himself.

A loud wolf-whistle pierced the air.

_Nope,_ Kakashi's head fell, _I'm a closet masochist._

_

* * *

_

With a final heave of his burning shoulders, the Copy-ninja pulled himself up and over the cold metal rail lining the balcony of the uppermost story.

Startled gasps and squeals of surprise greeted him. His legs, being thoroughly tangled in his mutinous pants, tripped him up and Kakashi found himself tumbling gracefully over the rail and right onto an inconveniently placed dining table. Crystalline fragments of shattered glass and sparkling champagne sprayed everywhere in a glistening rainbow of cresting droplets and tinkling shards as he rolled to the floor. The thin material of the white table-cloth fluttered over his crumpled form anti-climatically.

"Dear _God_!" a tall man dressed in a trim black suit blustered in shock, his acne-pocked cheeks flushing furiously beneath a hedge-like mustache. A middle-aged woman, whose lavish dinner Kakashi was now wearing as a impromptu tie of sorts, shrieked in indignation. Kakashi quickly floundered into a vertical position, tugging frantically at his rebellious pants. She scrambled over the back of her chair.

"Ah..." he started awkwardly, feeling all of the ship's crew and passengers staring at him, "Excuse me." his visible eye creased at the woman's heated expression of outrage.

"Oi!" the gruff voice of a shocked guard interrupted the uncomfortable exchange, "What's the ruckus?"

"Mah, I think she needs a refund." Kakashi supplied, glancing up at the guard blandly as he pointed a food-encrusted finger towards the woman. She blinked, her disturbed expression slipping into one of flattered surprise.

"-Oh!" the woman spoke quickly, "Why thank you!"

"Oh!" Kakashi mimicked reflexively, "You're wel-"

"Alright, now what in the world is going on here?" the Copy-ninja looked over, sweat-dropping as the head of security approached the scene.  
_  
_"That man just-"

Kakashi took off running before he could hear the rest of the guard's befuddled explanation, the words whistling away with the wind rushing by his still-pink ears.

He didn't know how many more jet-skis were going to come by and he had wasted more than enough time already. Standing around and trying to explain why he had just wriggled around in some rich lady's dinner with his pants around his ankles was completely detrimental to the mission after all... Not to mention a little awkward.

_Yup_, Kakashi grimaced, _Definitely going to have to be very particular about word choice when I write out the mission report for this one._ He quickly pushed the thought to the back of his mind and focused all of his energy on _speed_.

If he could just make it to the front of the ship before all the jet-skis passed by, then he could execute his plan and, hopefully, catch up to his team. Kakashi sprinted down the straight aisle between two rows of tables, steadily gaining momentum.

"Hey, stop there!" Heavy booted footsteps thudded belatedly after him.

A weary-looking busboy carelessly swung his cart out into the middle of the aisle before him. Without breaking stride, Kakashi hurtled over the towering plates and dishes, his wiry musculature folding into a striking pose of controlled swiftness as he sailed through the air, an inch from the boy's nose. A startled expression sluggishly lifted the busboy's acne-pocked cheeks into a dazed grin.

"Woah..."

The thin buzzing whir of a far-off approaching jet-ski vibrated in Kakashi's ears. He leaned further onto the tips of his toes.

"Stop!"

An oblivious waitress pivoted slowly before him, unknowingly stepping backwards into his path. She gasped when he smashed into her, heavy tray and all of it's contents flipping wildly through the air. Kakashi just barely managed to catch her around the waist before she could fall. In a split second he had lifted her off her feet, spun them both in a stumbled pirouette, and flung her neatly into the lap of a pleasantly surprised old man.

All in all, he felt that it would have been more charming and gallant if his pants hadn't been crawling off his ass.

"Stop running!"

Kakashi struggled to regain his balance. Ducking into a half-planned roll, he came up again sprinting. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the thin white wake of an approaching jet-ski flitting closer over the dark surface of the river. He exhaled all of the air in his lungs sharply and pumped his arms harder, urging himself to go even faster. Everything depended on his timing, any chance he had of catching up to his team rested on this very moment. He neared the end of the aisle.  
_  
_As he dived over the rail lining the nose of the ship, the lurching sensation of plummeting headfirst down three stories to the seemingly hard and flat surface of the slate gray river below sent his senses spiraling into hyperactive awareness. Every millimeter of his being was thrumming, electric energy whizzing underneath thin, pale skin through a maze-work of veins pulsing with the throbbing beat of his accelerated heart. He was keenly aware of the cool, damp lick of the air whistling through his silver strands, the dry rustling of fabric fluttering in his ears as the river rushed up to meet him.

His brain had just enough time to process three thoughts as time warped and condensed around him.

His timing was a tad too perfect.

He really should invest in a belt.

And, closet masochist or not...

-This was gonna fucking _hurt_.

* * *

Splitting pain and white-hot agony.

* * *

For years to come, residents of the riverside shanty town would entertain themselves during poorly-cooked dinners and stuffy holiday parties by telling the tale of the white-haired young man who had demolished a nearby pub, drowned an old lady, dived off the front of an enormous ferry-boat, and set fire to six jet-skis-all for the purpose of hunting down various articles of clothing that seemed to habitually disappear from his person throughout the course of the story. A real crowd pleaser, it was filled with riveting action sequences, saucy situations, and witty dialogue. The tale ended on a decidedly ominous note, with the warning that a naked young man would appear out of thin air and cause one to spontaneously-combust if one did not do as they were told.

...

To this day there remains a curious number of young girls in the riverside shanty town that habitually neglect all of their household chores every Tuesday.

* * *

"The _fuck_?" the man's high-pitched shriek was muffled by three shades of fury and the thick padding of his red racing helmet, "What you _doing_, exploding my jet-ski like that?"

"Ahh..." Kakashi gurgled weakly in response, his reeling head ducking briefly back under the water. He was finding it rather difficult to maintain his suave, quick-witted persona in light of the complicated task of treading water with a shattered elbow, three broken ribs, and a possible concussion. Why was he wet again?

"The hell man." the red-garbed man groaned, raising a gloved hand to his helmet in a gesture of profound disbelief, "The _hell _you thinking?"

"I... saw a penny..."

"The _fuck?_" the man squeaked, splashing a small wave of water over the jounin's dazed face as he brought his fist down sharply, "You tryin' to tell me you-"

"Hey, are you guys okay?" a man riding a purple jet-ski puttered worriedly to a stop near them, his head tilted in a perplexed fashion, "What in the world happened?"

"This crazy mother-licker here just jumped off the front of that ferry there and he-he freaking dive-bombed my jet-ski, that's what happened! It flipped outta control and I fell off it and it fucking exploded against that part of the pier!" He brandished an accusing finger towards a charred section of the pier, surrounded by a gaggle of gawping, open-mouthed citizens.

"Oh," the muffled voice sounded vaguely astonished, "Now, why would you do something like that?" the purple-suited man shook his helmeted head minutely, leaning back on his seat in shock as he stared at the bedraggled jounin.

"Nuhhh," the Copy-ninja explained somewhat deliriously, "Are you... purple?"

"Oh dear, this doesn't look very good." the man's voice had an unusually cheery lilt to it as he idly scratched his purple helmet, "I guess I'd better give you both a ride to shore then!"

Kakashi groaned as the jet-ski racer opposite him grumbled darkly under his breath and tugged him, none to gently, over one of his red-suited shoulders. He blinked blearily, trying to see through the somewhat blindingly bright haze that was blotting out his vision. There was something he needed to do... But what?

"Ay, don't get too comfortable." the red racer growled menacingly as the Copy-ninja's squished cheek slid squeakily down the back of his shiny helmet.

"Hnuh-kay?"

Another jet-ski zipped by them as he was handed off, none to gently, to the purple-garbed man. _Eight... _Kakashi groaned as was pulled onto the parked jet-ski. They rocked in the passing jet-ski's wake, the gentle lurching motion sending his liquefied insides sloshing against his broken ribs sickeningly. Kakashi's eyes snapped open.

_Eight!_ _That was the eight jet-ski to pass by!_

"Woah, woah! Steady there!" the man exclaimed as the jounin started struggling frantically in his arms, "What are you doing?"

Kakashi swung his good arm and caught the purple-garbed man under the chin with a stinging karate-chop. In one smooth, controlled movement he yanked the rubber bracelet linked with the ignition key off the man's wrist and kicked him bodily into the water. Sliding into the seat, he jammed the key into the ignition and twisted. A loud roar rumbled through the machine, overshadowing the startled shouts of the two jet-ski racers as they splashed on either side of him. Sai's white ink-beast flapped by overhead at that moment, heading in a straight path down the pier towards Naruto and Sakura.

Kakashi gunned the motor.

* * *

_Why do I feel like Team Seven played musical chairs and I ended up in Naruto's seat? _Sakura groaned mentally as she grappled to get a grip on Izanami's wildly flopping hands. The aristocratic woman's heavily made-up face was contorted in an almost comical expression of bug-eyed terror and vein-popping outrage over the shoulder of her captor.

"Save me already, you _idiot_!" Izanami's shrill shriek rattled her eardrums as the captive woman sailed over the medic's head. Sakura ran up the wall of a small shop and kicked down hard, launching herself over the gaping faces of random citizens strolling on the pier, and reached for the daimyo's wife. Her fingertips brushed slippery silk.

The River Country's matriarch howled when she was caught neatly in the burly arms of yet another nuke-nin. He took two steps down the pier and then, swerving so suddenly he nearly fell off the edge, handed her off to a skinny rogue ninja springing out of the water. The wet nuke-nin sped by Sakura and leap-frogged up onto the rooftops.

"Uahh!" Sakura roared in frustration, punching the burly-armed nuke-nin in the jaw with enough force to shatter the vertebrae in his spine. _Where's some shadow clones when you need them?_

This stilted game of monkey in the middle was unbearably frustrating. But it was slowly but surely coming to an end... unlike Sakura's patience, which had succumbed to the licking flames of fury some time ago.

Not long into the chase, the medic had realized that pure, chakra-enhanced speed simply would not cut it when one's target was being tossed rapidly between the arms of seemingly innumerable rogue ninja that had just as much chakra-enhanced speed as she did. So, she opted for the simple solution of utterly destroying every single person whose hands came into contact with her charge. Taking some numbers out of the equation, so to speak.

But, no matter how many skulls she crushed or necks she throttled, she was, in the end, no closer to rescuing Izanami than before. The sheer frustration of it could've boiled her.

And _where _was the rest of her team? Did they not notice the ear-rattling collapse of the restaurant building around them after she punched a rogue-nin shaped hole through the wall of the bathroom? Or maybe her boys were mentally deranged enough to think that it was completely normal for her to knock down buildings? Honestly, it was like they didn't know her at all.

She had been shocked, to say the least, when she had skipped into the little girls room-only to be jarred by the sight of a handful of gristly, muscular men hustling in through the door connecting the women's restroom to the outside. Things had gotten even more uncomfortable when they had pocketed the small hand-held seashell-shaped soaps sitting on the sinks. Then they had assaulted the daimyo's wife.

Now here she was, chasing after a woman she loathed with no sight of her block-headed teammates, her frayed nerves sparking hot with rage and her fragile grip on sanity slipping. She was literally going to kick each of those dumb boys in the buttocks so hard that they would have to replace their shinobi rears with heavy, metal, robot block-butts!

"Hey! Sakura-chan!" dumb boy number one chirped brightly as he kicked off the shoulders of a shadow-clone and propelled himself closer to her, "What's going on?" Izanami screeched loudly as she was tossed in the air right over their heads.

_Clueless._

Ignoring the sudden stab of pain that Naruto's stupidity caused her, Sakura just snarled.

"Get Izanami!"

But, before either of them could attempt to do so, a speedboat swerved up alongside the pier and, with a tremendous squawk, Izanami was tossed in. She tumbled off the backseat and rolled to the floor as it sped away. Sakura and Naruto leapt after the bobbing speedboat onto the dark surface of the river. They sprinted in tandem, gliding over the choppy grey waves as they strained to catch the boat before it could reach a speed where it could outstrip them. Sakura's lungs burned and her heart throbbed, but it was nothing akin to the pain of the frustration blistering her insides.

But, even as determination solidified within her, a cold trickle of unease slithered through her stomach. These kidnappers were unsettling in their precision.

The only other time she had encountered a group of rogue-ninja that was this organized, that had this level of nearly-telepathic harmony, was along the Fire nation's border with Grass Country. On that one mission, nearly a month and a half ago, their carefully constructed teams had lost control over the situation a total of two times. Something that was unheard of for the successful Team Seven. And, on top of the unthinkable catastrophe of their mission spiraling out of control, her shallow perception of her former sensei had been brutally shattered.

Sakura struggled fiercely through the white froth of the speedboat's wake, Naruto straining eagerly at her side. But, even as she pushed her body to the height of physical exertion, she was unable to shake the worried thoughts that had suddenly taken root in her mind.

Ever since that one mission, after she'd seen Kakashi wracked with seizures and gasping with pain, Sakura hadn't known exactly what to think of the Copy-ninja.

Part of her wanted to simply brush it off and forget about it, forget that heart-breaking helplessness and vulnerability she had seen in him. It should be an easy enough thing to do. After all, hadn't she ignored, with a nearly unconscious forcefulness, all other indications that the man was really human for as long as she'd known him? The weary slump of his shoulders, the hours he spent staring longingly at the memorial stone, his inability to so much as let anyone to touch him in even the most casual of ways... she had left these unacknowledged and shunned to the back of her mind, simply for the sake of her own mental comfort.

But, hadn't she long grown out of that small, foolish little girl persona? Wasn't she stronger now? Smarter, more responsible? She no longer had to hide from the sad things of life, things that she didn't fully understand. She was too old for that. Somewhere along the way she had fallen into the habit of thinking of the Copy-ninja as something inexhaustible, an infinite resource of loving support and selfless power. Inhuman.

As she raced after the retreating vessel, her muscles burning, Sakura felt something resolve and harden within her. She already knew herself to be a compassionate medic, a loyal teammate, and a powerful shinobi. But, what she had failed to do, what everyone else had somehow failed to do, was be a friend to the man who had strengthened, protected, and been there for her since childhood. She would go much farther than just saying "thank you" whenever he showed up and saved the day, as if it was to be expected of him, as if it were his daily duty to risk his well-being for theirs. Sakura decided, quite unexpectedly, that she would try to get to know her former-sensei and be a real friend to him.

She would embrace any weaknesses or flaws he may accidentally unmask, instead of ignoring or laughing them away. She would somehow, through her actions, let him know that her admiration and respect for him would never waver, and that nothing he felt or did would change that. The decision was, altogether, a little spontaneous and bordering on the edge of profound. It gave Sakura a strangely buoyant feeling.

_Although_, she sighed mentally, _now would certainly be a good time for Kakashi-sensei to act out the never-failing, unstoppable character he seems to love so much_.

"Yo."

Kakashi flashed a jaunty salute as he whizzed by them on a blur of roaring purple.

Sakura did not miss the irony of the situation.

* * *

Kakashi took in a deep, steadying breath through his nose, contracting his core against the overwhelming feeling of vertigo that threatened to overthrow his balance, and shakily rose into a standing position on the speeding jet-ski. With his knees half-bent, absorbing the minuscule lurches and judders of the bobbing vehicle beneath him, he slowly leaned forwards until his chest was almost pressing against the handle. His left arm hung limply at his side and the soft sensation of the cool, salty air slipping through his thin gloved fingers was at contrast with the searing throb of his shattered elbow. His wild grey hair was buffeted about his face with the force of the wind, thin silver strands whipping silently over his slanted hitae-ate and stinging the exposed skin around his uncovered eye.

Sai dipped briefly down behind him, fluid lines of ink rustling faintly against the rushing force of the wind as the soaring beast's wings stretched and flapped. Naruto let out a sharp shout as he leaped from the churning white surface of the river and onto the back of Sai's winged beast, discreetly letting his team captain know his new position without wasting time with an explanation. Sakura stayed silent behind him, indicating that she had decided to stay her course and cover Kakashi's back in case of a surprise attack. The Copy-ninja's lips quirked.

_Team Seven really is the best when it comes to teamwork and communication._

He had doubted them from the beginning. Just like every fresh batch of academy graduates that he had been knuckled into testing over the years, Kakashi had walked into his new team with the assumption that they were just another bunch of self-absorbed, annoying, hopeless little brats... He had been right for the most part.

But those three little brats had managed to pull off one of the most rare, impressive feats in all of humanity's wide spectrum of astounding accomplishments on their very first day... they had surprised Konoha's Copy-Ninja no Kakashi.

From day one, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke had unwittingly revealed to him their hidden potential to be great ninjas, and even greater people. He had nurtured this small, sometimes infinitesimal, kernel of embryonic skill with all of his being for as long as he had had them as his team. And, despite the minor modifications to the team roster (wherein Sasuke cruelly hacked apart the already battered remains of their pure, fragile, little hearts and shoved the mangled clumps of bleeding, mutilated flesh into Sai's delicate artist hands, which quickly proceeded to administer calculated amounts of care and affection in only the most obtuse and offensive of ways) Kakashi felt that his team had learned the lesson well.

Their teamwork was so tight, so dazzling in its harmonious perfection, that one might even think that all of the members of Team Kakashi possessed some manner of unearthly telepathic-

-a barrage of Naruto's shadow-clones suddenly rained down around Kakashi, all of them yammering and yowling in ear-splitting chorus.

Kakashi had just enough time to regain a sliver of control over his, now wildly swerving, vehicle before the shadow clones disappeared around him in rapid succession, the smoke from their collective exit blinding him temporarily.

"Eeeeyahhhhh!"

Izanami's shrill, ear-rattling shriek of terror. An uncomfortably familiar glowing blue ball of energy flying swiftly towards him through the murky smoke... These were the only two indications that the Copy-ninja had had a _dangerously _optimistic perception of his team, and that he was about to be reunited with all those poor souls he so frequently fretted over at that big hunk of polished rock in the middle of Konoha's revered memorial grounds.

"Raaaseeengaaan!"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, as he sprang off the front of his racing jet-ski and leaped for the back of the speedboat before him with all of the strength and power that comes from unbridled panic and desperation, Kakashi supposed he shouldn't have been be all that surprised.

Naruto _is _Konoh'as number one unpredictable ninja...

Naruto sailed neatly over the outstretched form of his sensei. Time seemed to slow down for Kakashi at that moment. All of his senses heightened to a hyper-level of almost painful awareness.

This meant that he could easily discern the sluggish transition on Naruto's whiskered face from smug confidence to an expression of slowly-budding horror, calculate the velocity of his air-borne student in concordance with that of the abandoned jet-ski behind him, and say a rueful farewell to his recently-adopted beautiful purple instrument of delight and thrill-seeking.

...

This also meant that he could feel the bone-crushing _snap _of his shattered elbow bending backwards and his shoulder dislocating with an overwhelming keenness when, a split-second after he wrapped his left hand around the boat's thin metal railing, the vehicle swerved sharply to the left.

Stars burst and sparked hotly behind his tightly closed eyes as pain rattled and screamed up and down his arm. His entire body stretched out with the force of the sudden, jarring turn, swinging him perpendicular to the frothy white surface of the river below. A glowing shower of flaming, white-hot metal shards peppered the air around him as Naruto's rasengan connected with the overheated engine of the purple jet-ski in a rush of searing heat.

The speedboat jerked again, this time to the right, and Kakashi was suddenly rolling and tumbling through the air helplessly. He landed on the bucking floor of the roaring speedboat with a crunch that sent his reeling mind flickering briefly back into the cool, dark recesses of unconsciousness.

"Kakashi-sensei!"

Sakura's frightened yelp jerked him harshly back into awareness, a spike of worry crunching through his chest at the uncharacteristic noise. Although the fear in her voice was not for herself, the first conclusion of his pain-muddled mind was that his student was in trouble and he needed to protect her.

Kakashi, his head and arm hanging limply, rolled into a staggered standing position, his sandaled feet stumbling over the bucking floor of the speedboat. His head spun and his lids fluttered dazedly as he struggled to get a grip on his surroundings. They were no longer traveling across the main river, having cut a diagonal line directly across the water's wide girth. They had taken an unexpected, _painful _turn at some point along the far bank and were now hurtling down a smaller stream that split off from the large river, racing down a steadily-narrowing trail of rushing water. Thick branches wreathed with drought-dried leaves rasped loudly on either side of the small boat as it zipped over the bucking swell of the white-tipped waves. Sai and Sakura hovered anxiously atop of Sai's uncertainly flapping ink beast, the encroaching branches on each side slowing their progress. Naruto and a horde or shadow clones sprinted through the tossing rapids some distance behind them.

"I can't drive this _thing_!"

Izanami's dismayed yelp effectively punctured his eardrums and shook him out of his pained stupor.

Kakashi jammed his hand into his weapon's pouch and swung his arm in front of his face in a knee-jerk, reflexive movement. The gleaming blade of a hooked dagger clashed with his kunai in a spray of bright sparks an inch from his nose. Iridescent orbs of startling hazel locked with his own through wind-blown strands of auburn hair, widening in apparent trepidation as the boy's honey-colored skin paled under a dark constellation of freckles. Kakashi paused, the unexpected youth of his opponent disarming him for a moment.

A second hooked dagger suddenly swung wildly up at him, curving towards his neck. The Copy-ninja's eyes narrowed and he shifted his stance, swinging his kunai in a controlled arc. The young man's first weapon was sent careening out into the frothy water, the second blade deflected with a ring of glancing metal. The rogue-ninja took a stuttered step back, raising his remaining dagger before his flinching face in a weak, indecisive movement. Kakashi took advantage of this apparent weakness and kicked the boy's legs out from under him, knocking him onto his back. The churning water tossed and splashed stinging droplets over them as the boat lurched. Izanami shrieked and gibbered loudly in the background, her manicured hands grappling with the wildly swerving steering wheel in a frenzied panic. Kakashi stepped down firmly on the boy's wrist, halting the wild flailing of the rogue-ninja's remaining dagger before it could hook around his hamstring.

The boat jostled and thrummed under his feet as he raised his arm to strike. The youth stared up at him, breathless with fear. Kakashi frowned, stilling. _Something's off about all this..._

A strong feeling of trepidation prickled through him, a cold wave of goose-bumps tingling over his skin. The Copy-ninja stood frozen, unable to move under the overwhelming sense that there was something he had missed about this situation, something very dangerous that was outside of his control.

It was this feeling, this sixth sense he had honed over his years risking his life for the sake of others, that caused him to simply _let _the young man under him deliver a swift, chakra-powered kick to his gut.

Kakashi crumpled to the deck.

He gasped breathlessly as white volts of electric pain snapped over his already-broken ribs in a blinding wave of agony. He fell to his knees just as a wave of flaming arrows tore through the air above him, splitting the bruised dusk sky into a glaring maze-work of orange and amber lines. If he had been standing for just one second longer, his body would now be ensconced in licking flames, run through with the splintery wood of thick, poison-slicked arrow-shafts.

Izanami's shrill screaming rang distantly in his ears. Kakashi was faintly aware of the slick surface of the boat's deck sliding wildly under him as she swerved the vehicle frantically from side to side. He struggled against the softening lines of the world, fighting to stay focused and aware even as the cool breath of unconsciousness wafted over him in a tempting wave.

But, as resolved and determined as he was, the Copy-ninja was still only human.

His dead loved one's relentless haunting, the countless hours of sleepless mourning, and his growing inability to simply eat-all of it mixed together with the crushing weight of his duty and everyone's expectations until the thick, suffocating weight of it crushed him. His body was shutting down.

He had just enough self-awareness left to feel the rib-crushing pressure of two thin arms wrapping tightly around his waist and the stomach-tossing lurch of gravity as the speedboat capsized. Then he was immersed in a world of wet, icy coldness and roaring silence.

* * *

_I feel that I need to say something about the continuation of this story._

_While I _do _plan to finish it, and I am _not _going on hiatus, I feel that it is unfair to my readers to be posting so irregularly and infrequently without acknowledging it. I do not know when I will post next and I am sorry for this. If I could I would be posting chapters once a week, but clearly that is just not going to happen. Sorry :P  
_

_But! I promise that I will not give up on this story until I've given it my best and it reaches an eventual conclusion! Please don't give up on me, you're reviews are a great help to me :) If there's anything that will make me work harder and faster on this story, it's hearing from you guys. It keeps my mind on the story and inspires me to write.  
_

_Also, I feel like it is necessary for me to inform anyone reading this story that, in the following chapters, you can expect to be confronted with some material that may be hard or uncomfortable to read. If you wish to continue reading then please do so with the knowledge that there most likely will be violence, physical and emotional torture, and angst. Although, that's not to say that I've completely gone to the dark-side and that there won't be any sunshine or happiness anymore :) _

_Anyway, please, please review! Thank you for reading!_

_~Minty  
_


	20. Chapter 20

"_Shit_. Kakashi!"

Naruto's heart stuttered in his chest. He watched helplessly as the lanky form of his sensei fell bonelessly to the shuddering deck of the speed-boat. For the briefest of moments Kakashi's crumpled figure was obscured by the thin frame of the rogue ninja as the youth knelt over him. And then, before Naruto could fully understand what was happening, the roaring vehicle had hurtled over the jagged edge of a protruding boulder. A terrific metallic shriek rent the air as the sleek belly of the boat grated over the rock in a splash of orange sparks and white spray. Izanami let out a strangled cry as the vehicle surged wildly up into the air.

Naruto balked.

The silhouette of the air-borne vehicle was illuminated against the hazy orange backdrop of the setting sun for the briefest of moments. Black shadows slid smoothly over the sleek surface of the boat, coloring the machine's elegant curvature with darkness. Crystalline water droplets unfurled majestically on either side of the rising boat like the diaphanous wings of a butterfly, the fine blossoming spray tinged a soft pink by the receding sunlight.

A sensation not unlike being punched in the chest overtook him and Naruto's stomach quickly plummeted with dread.

Before him, the moment forever branding itself into his memory despite the all-encompassing unreality of it, the speed-boat began to capsize in midair. The smoldering snarl of the thrumming vehicle choked to a stuttered halt, and there was nothing he could do but watch the shadowed figures slide across the deck.

Izanami tumbled from her seat with a shrill scream. She dropped with a high splash into the rough waters, landing a couple meters from the muddy edge of one of the sloping banks. But Naruto's eyes were trained on the collapsed figure of the Copy-ninja as the jounin slid limply from the tipping deck and tumbled into the frothing surf.

The arms of the rogue-ninja had been clasped firmly around his former sensei's waist.

"Sensei!" Naruto heard himself yell hoarsely.

A flash of silver hair, a glimpse of the rubber sole of a sandal, and then Kakashi was buried under wave after wave of rushing water and cresting white spray.

Sakura let out a sharp cry of distress from somewhere above him.

Why did Kakashi-sensei have to be so _stupid_?

Why did he always have to put himself smack dab in the middle of a dangerous situation and take the brunt of everything? Didn't he know that it was just as much their job to protect him as it was his job to protect them? Wasn't that what he'd been teaching them all this time that he'd gone croaking on and on about teamwork? Or did that rule just not apply to the legendary Copy-Ninja? Was Kakashi so far removed from them that it was against the rules for them to care about him just as much as he did for them? Who the hell gave him the right to decide he was going to be alone anyway! If Naruto wanted to help Kakashi, if he wanted to be the one doing the protecting this time, then where-_where_! did Kakashi get it into his head that he could just go off and do stupid shit like this!

The powerful rush of heated rage and stinging distress that had swelled up inside of him at the sight of his sensei falling into limp unconsciousness was suddenly dispelled with an icy wave of fear. Naruto's sprinting steps stuttered over the bucking surface of the rushing water below. His blue eyes widened and his mouth parted in mute horror at the scene unfolding before him.

The smooth, white belly of the tipping speedboat arced slowly into the splashing waves before him, like the death roll of some primeval whale tossing in the final throes of agony-

-and then it was _rolling_.

Nearly a thousand pounds of unforgiving metal and plastic churned over the exact spot that his former sensei had slipped into only moments before.

"Naruto!" Sakura's terrified scream of warning was distant.

His mind has crashed to a stunned halt, but, even as the bitter tang of shock resounded within him, one thought blared clearly through the haze of panic.

_Get Kakashi._

Time warped around him. The very air seemed to thicken, congealing into what felt like countless layers of transparent, thin elastic barriers. Naruto sent a burst of blue chakra whizzing through his bloodstream, pushing his muscles to a threshold of speed and power that normal humans couldn't experience without the very fibers of their muscles shattering.

Naruto rocketed forwards, his every thought bent solely upon the task of breaking through and shattering the invisible boundaries of time and space.

The over-heated engine of the tumbling vehicle let loose one last bone-reverberating, defiant roar. There was an ear-splitting shriek of tearing metal and grinding gears. And then his world was a blinding crescendo of billowing heat and flame.

* * *

"_Naruto_!"

Sakura's scream was so shrill and loud next to Sai's ear that for the briefest of moments his vision was spliced.

Sound waves rippled out from the explosion below. His trained artist's eye picked up on the faintly visible walls of warped air rolling powerfully towards them. Sakura's hands convulsed around his shoulders, small fists curling in the loose fabric of his shirt as she crumpled forwards against his straight back. Sai clamped his legs tightly against the heaving sides of the flapping ink beast and leaned back, steering the soaring creature into a sharp upwards spiral. Air whooshed loudly around him and he felt the infinitesimal pressure of his hair laying flat and his clothes pressing against his skin as a great flap of the ink-beast's wings sent them careening upwards.

The sound waves caught up to them, a sensation not unlike being punched in the gut lifting them a couple inches from their seat. The force of the blow buffeted the gossamer-thin wings of the straining creature beneath them with all of the intensity of a powerful gust of wind. Sai closed his eyes, tensing, and he found himself leaning back into Sakura as her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. They steeled themselves, cringing.

A blistering wave of heat rolled thunderously over them. A wall of blinding fire followed not a second later, roaring as it whooshed by his ears in a flurry of licking flame and sparks.

The ink-beast disappeared beneath them.

For a moment they were weightless, eyes closed, clinging tightly to each other in a world of searing heat and roaring fire.

And then, just as quickly as it had come, the moment passed. The oppressive heat was swept away from them and cool air rushed in, whipping against their singed clothes and hair as they began to plummet back to earth. For a fraction of a second, Sai was compelled to remain in this intimate world of rushing sensations and heightened emotion. To bask in the revelry of this strange, new connection with his teammate, this instinctual _needing _of another person, that transcended all his previous understanding.

And then the lurching tug of gravity fully gripped him and his mind was rudely yanked from all fanciful delusions.

His hands shot back into his pack, delving through the contents with practiced ease. He yanked his notebook out, his emergency paint-brush sliding from the inner sleeve of his shirt into his hand deftly. He was swirling smooth lines of ink onto the grainy surface of wildly rustling parchment before he had even opened his eyes.

There was an explosive pain in the back of his head as Sakura's prominent forehead crashed against his skull, the sudden motion of another winged ink-beast cutting under them catching her by surprise and jerking her forwards.

Sai made a mental note to broaden his already extensive repertoire of forehead-related insults as he leaned forward in his seat and peered down at the thin stream of rapids with watering eyes.

Swells of thick black smoke roiled up from the white waters below, swirling slowly up through the humid air around them to brush against the low-hanging sky of swollen, murky thunderclouds. The artist's coal-black eyes narrowed and his somber gaze traced the winding path of the water, searching for any sign of his two teammates.

He could just make out the silver gleam of a fragment of the speed-boat's shattered hull peeking out through the splashing waves from between two boulders. Farther down the river a flash of tanned leather, a scrap from the vehicle's once-pristine seats, was tossed into the air with a spray of foam. Even farther and there was a nebulous cloud of mist where the rushing waters spewed forth in an angry spray of white over the steep edge of a towering cliff.

_Ah yes! _Sai mentally congratulated himself on his keen observational skills, _Those two entangled figures going over the top of the waterfall must be Kakashi-sensei and his young assailant._

"Oh my god," Sakura breathed behind him in horror, her arms tightening around his waist, "Ohmygod! Sai! They're falling down a waterfall!"

_Falling down a..._

"Shit." Sai remarked.

"_Go_! Make this thing g-" Sakura's scream was ripped from her throat when Sai suddenly jammed his heels into the ink-beast's sides.

_Miscalculation._ Sai's mind had just enough time to blare this single warning as his overly-enthusiastic kick sent the ink-beast rocketing forwards with enough force to flatten his stomach against his spine.

He was slammed backwards into Sakura with a brain-rattling jerk.

The air rushed over them with a keen, whistling shriek that had the exposed gums of his gritted teeth stinging and his cheeks flapping audibly. Sai had just enough awareness to keep his eyes cracked open against the rushing force of the wind, his gloved hands squeezing the reigns as the air buffeted him powerfully.

They hurtled downwards in a sloped dive towards the waterfall that had all of the blood in his body whizzing upwards. Just when it felt like his eyeballs were going to touch the back of his skull, the ink-beast's wings sprang open.

They were instantaneously slammed forwards against the beast's broad back as the whooshing air was caught in the creature's straining wings. Sai distinctly felt the spinal fluid cushioning the vertebrae of his back compress with a bone-grinding squeak as inertia compressed him down into his seat.

Sakura's bludgeon of a forehead slammed into his shoulder with the force of a falling meteorite. The thick inky lines of the creature's wings vibrated with the strain as it yanked them out of their steep dive and swooped them around to face the falling spray of water.

The charred orange of Naruto's jumpsuit twisted limply through the air in a sheen of white vapor above them as he tumbled over the edge of the waterfall. The thin layers of Izanami's indigo dress swelled and fluttered around her as she spiraled downwards a couple meters above them.

_Too late for Kakashi-sensei..._Somewhere deep inside himself, Sai cringed at the cold exactness of his inner voice.

Sai pressed his heels against the ink-beast's heaving sides and urged the creature forwards to intercept the woman's rapid descent. The great wings flapped powerfully, stirring the cool misty air around them, and Sai felt Sakura reinforce her steel grip around his waist with a tingle of chakra as he leaned forwards.

Sai stretched his arms out, his bare stomach brushing against the smooth surface of the ink-beast's head as he strained forwards to catch Izanami-

-A dark figure wreathed in flickering sparks of blue chakra shot out from the foliage on their left, snatching Izanami milliseconds before she landed in Sai's outstretched arms. The man curled around her smaller form and they dropped like a stone to the churning depths below. Their entangled figures somersaulted with the force of their freefall, spiraling into obscurity.

Suddenly, a volley of fire-tipped arrows cut through the air after him where Izanami had been moments before.

A searing blaze of glinting metal and flickering flame arced above them in a forbidding wall. Sakura shrieked and Sai had to arch his back powerfully to avoid having his arms and face peppered through with fiery arrow-heads. His sudden movement sent the ink-beast lurching backwards into a tight back-flip.

As they rolled backwards the cool damp air churned around them, and with it came something familiar and, at the same time, foreign.

Clarity.

They could still save Naruto, but only if they didn't waste time trying to rescue Izanami. The enemies hidden in the trees were going to attack again, and if they wanted to escape with their lives, they needed to leave the area fast. There was absolutely no chance of saving Kakashi.

And perhaps the most startling revelation...

All of this _bothered _him.

* * *

_Consciousness wafted over him like a cool breath of fresh air, soothing and gentle._

_In its wake a heated, aching pain tumbled through him, resonating along the frayed fibers of his muscles._

Kakashi groaned.

_His awareness expanded._

_He was able to identify the rhythm of the constant rumbling and hissing around him as the roar of breaking of waves._

Cool water swelled leisurely over his legs, washing up his ankles, knees, and hips to lap teasingly at the small raised arch of his back. Soft mud cradled his sprawled form, it's smooth touch chilling in its caress. A swift breeze, stinging and frigid, swept over his prone body. Small pebbles and grit skittered over him.

"Whas next?" The Copy-ninja mumbled deliriously, his brow furrowing as he tried to call to mind the next memorized section of Icha Icha Tropical.

It was one of his favorites. Ripe with plot twists and character development, it never failed to leave Kakashi squirming in his seat. Which was actually a little awkward whenever he had to spend any length of time in a waiting room or any other public setting, but that was besides the point.

Icha Icha Tropical frequently served as the backdrop to many a fanciful, erotic imagining. And, if the choking waves of agony rocking through him were anything to judge by-now was a really, really good time for a fanciful, erotic imagining.

The words came to him, parading through his half-conscious mind in a soothing and familiar pattern.

_There was a distant sound of rolling thunder, the last grumblings of a retreating storm._

_Prince Rokuro tried to lift himself from the soggy shoreline, but collapsed with a groan as a sharp shoot of pain ricocheted through him._

Thunder cracked, the power of the blast rattling the trunks of the trees leaning over Kakashi. The Copy-ninja jerked in surprise, and the motion sent a jolt of pain through him, making him groan.

Kakashi halted his mental narration of Icha Icha Tropical in shock.

"Oh... oh god..." he panted, his half-conscious mind quickly becoming delirious with excitement.

Somehow, someway, the words from the romance novel that he was reciting were crossing the boundaries of fantasy into reality-what was happening to Prince Rokuro, the dashing protagonist of the story, was happening to him!

Kakashi quickly skipped ahead a couple paragraphs to the part where a beautiful young exotic maiden slinks out of the tropical foliage and, seeing the compelling masculinity of the wounded protagonist, proceeds to administer aid to him in the most tender of ways.

_He had been lying in a pain-filled daze on the bank of the river for so long that, when he heard the soft tread of approaching footfalls, he almost didn't recognize the sound for what it was._

A twig snapped somewhere to the left of him, quickly followed by several stumbled steps closer to him. Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut tighter, shivering with excitement. It was really working!

_A startled gasp of surprise sounded above him, gentle concern coloring the feminine voice._

"Uhn." A low grunt of annoyance sounded above Kakashi. The Copy-ninja stiffened, determined to play the role of the charming protagonist despite the surprisingly masculine tone of his soon-to-be-lover's voice.

_Rokuro tensed at the sudden sensation of tentative fingers brushing lightly over his broad shoulder_, _but soon relaxed under the gentle touch._

Kakashi's entire body flinched when the front of his green flak jacket was yanked open with a loud tear of splitting seams. He quickly wiped away the confused frown that had started to grow on his features and arranged them into what he imagined to be an unconscious, ruggedly attractive look.

So what if his manifested lover was a little forward? Love was love, right?

_"What happened to you?" the definitely feminine voice muttered softly, as if lost in thought. A small hand, smooth and soft like velvet, cupped his cheek tenderly._

"Alright," Kakashi's soulmate murmured in a sultry tenor, "Show me the goods, old man."

Hands that were just the tiniest bit larger and heavier than the average young exotic maiden's rubbed coarsely up and down the Copy-ninja's sides, patting as they went. Kakashi squirmed, a little uncomfortable with his manifested lover's disregard for his injuries and disrespectful language.

But, unable to fully give up on the realization of his long-held dream, Kakashi swallowed and kept his eyes steadfastly closed.

Just when he was about to recite the next line, his train of thought was interrupted by another of his so-called lover's morally questionable actions.

"Huh?" Kakashi couldn't stop the soft noise of confusion from slipping out when the pair of hands giving his aching torso the rub-down started jerking him around to finger through all of the pockets of his torn jounin vest.

Now, that was just rude. They hadn't even gotten hitched yet and she was already scouring him for money!

The Copy-ninja floundered with indecision, the first traces of uncertainty beginning to leak through his rose-tinted fantasy. Should he keep acting like he was unconscious? She wasn't really following the script so maybe he should-

-Kakashi's eyes snapped open and he yelped loudly when the hands that had been exploring his jounin vest shot down under his back to cup his ass through the back pockets of his low-riding pants.

The startled freckly face of the young rogue-ninja stared back at him, shock widening his hazel eyes.

"Gahahhh!" Kakashi screamed and frantically shoved the kid off him before he could remember his injuries.

A whirlwind of heady pain swooped down on him instantaneously. The jounin could do nothing but roll onto his side and curl into a helpless ball as the youth quickly scampered around and picked up some of Kakashi's scrolls and weapons he had dropped. The boy hugged the stolen goods to his chest, panting with fright, and made to leap up into the trees, but then stopped, as if remembering something.

He whipped back around to face the fallen jounin, who was glaring accusingly at him through hooded eyes slitted with pain and betrayal. Indecision flickered over the young man's face.

And then he was stuffing as many of the scrolls and weapons as he could into his own pockets, pulling out a small case from where it had been stuffed into his left boot, and walking quickly back towards Kakashi.

"H-hey!" Kakashi choked in alarm at the rogue-ninja's sudden approach, writhing helplessly in the mud.

The boy cracked open the hand-held case, pulled out a syringe from the soft, cushioned lining, and knelt over the Copy-ninja. He bit his lip and raised his arm, his hand shaking slightly, over the jounin's sprawled form. Kakashi's eyes widened.

"Don't-"

The sharp prick of the hypodermic needle piercing the taut skin of his shoulder through the thin material of his shirt cut him off. Instantaneous heat, stinging and fierce, seeped through his arm as the plunger was steadily pressed down.

The heat began to grow in intensity, expanding throughout his body with each throb of his heart. Kakashi gasped, his body shivering at the foreign substance invading his system, and he was vaguely aware of the young rogue-ninja dropping the needle by his head and taking off into the trees.

"Y-You look nothing like her a-anyway!" Kakashi yelled hoarsely at the retreating youth's back, for a moment forgetting, in the midst of his steadily-growing disorientation, that the young man had no idea what he was talking about and, even if he did, he most likely had no wish to be compared to an exotic seductress.

* * *

_I'm back!_

_I'm sorry it took so long for me to update, but you see I got lost on the road of life and... wow, when you think about it-that is actually a pre-tty va-lid excuse haha! But anyway, here's chapter 20, have fun reading, there's more to come on the way (oh little do you know poor reader, little do you know mwuahaha), and please feel free to review and tell me what's on your mind :) _

_thanks!_

_~Flinty  
_


	21. Chapter 21

...

Nostalgia

...

...

"Sakura-san, please. Calm-"

The stinging slap of flesh connecting with flesh echoed loudly through the shadowed undergrowth. A flock of startled birds erupted from the branches overhead at the sound, their wingbeats fluttered and frantic in the descending darkness. Thunder boomed ominously overhead and receded into low, distant rumbles as a hushed whisper of drizzling rain fell swiftly over them.

"_Do you have _any_ idea what you've done_?"

Sai reeled back, hand on his cheek; alarmed at the intensity in her scathing, uncharacteristically quiet voice.

"I-"

"Three days a week for the past two and a half months..." Sakura began, her voice dangerously low, "He…" she seemed to choke then, her gloved hand reaching up to clutch convulsively at the grimy neck of her shirt.

"He would come to my office," She breathed in shakily, "and I would have to sit there and _watch_… as the man who's been there for me and protected me since I was a child-who's done more for me than even my own _father_-" her voice cracked and she closed her eyes, ducking her head. Her shoulders shook, and whether it was from the strain of the last couple hours or from the fervent emotion coloring her voice, Sai couldn't tell.

When she finally lifted her head to look at him, her green eyes glinting feverishly through slick, pale pink strands of hair, her expression was blank and immeasurably cold-as if the anger she felt were too great to physically convey.

Sai's eyes widened and he took an unconscious step back. Sakura plowed on. Relentless.

"I would have to sit there and listen to him make _jokes_ on the exam table while, sweating and shivering, he strained and tortured himself-just to use a spark of chakra."

Sai steadied himself against the sudden burning at the back of his throat, fisting his hands. He had known that Kakashi was under doctor's orders not to use any chakra throughout the duration of this mission, but...

Against his will, his mind summoned the image of the quiet, lamb-like acceptance in Kakashi's gaze as the man was knocked to the ground on that unfortunate infiltration mission into Hijame's camp months ago.

Sai clenched his jaw, feeling distinctly nauseous, but Sakura didn't stop there.

"I don't expect that _you _had even noticed that the man you call your team-leader has dropped nearly fifteen pounds and weighs roughly the same as a civilian teenage girl..." she advanced on him now, her green eyes slitted, "Or that he's only slept twice since this mission even started."

He opened and closed his mouth soundlessly for a moment, inexplicably stung.

"Sakura-san," he said coldly, "it is hardly my concern that Kakashi-san was declared mission-ready despite his obvious decline in health, seeing as I am not the team medic. I do, however, feel the need to remind you that escape was the only viable option at the-"

-Sakura _slammed_her fist into a nearby tree-trunk. A stinging spray of splintered wood burst into the air, making Sai flinch.

"_Dammit_, Sai!" her expression took on an agonized lilt, her eyes bright and wild, "You _knew _he wouldn't stand a chance if we left him!"

Sai said nothing. A cool mask of indifference had slid firmly into place, sealing the heated throb inside his chest with an icy layer of detachment. He didn't need this.

He didn't need to feel this.

"You knew…"

Her voice was small and broken then, and she seemed to wilt before him. Her knees gave out from under her as she stumbled against a tree, grimy fingernails clutching at the wet bark. Sai watched as she raised a shaky hand to cover her eyes, her head hanging as the rain pummeled the ground around them.

Something inside him twisted. Since when did Sakura look so weak and out of control? What was happening to them?

Sai tilted his head to glance down at Naruto's still, freshly-healed body lying limp on the moss before his feet.

What he _needed_ was for Sakura to stop wasting time.

Everything in him, all of the lessons that had been beaten and branded into him during his years in ROOT, screamed at him to get moving.

But, when Sakura's quiet, torn voice filled the heavy, wet air again, Sai couldn't find it in himself to stop her.

"I just-I didn't..." she broke off, shaking her head, "I didn't want to believe that he wasn't okay… He's always so strong and… It's my fault."

"Sakura-san…"

"You're right. I shouldn't have cleared him to go on this mission. I knew he wasn't ready, _he_ knew he wasn't ready, but I-"

"You did what you thought was right at the time." He cut her off then, "It wasn't the correct choice, but it's too late to change anything now. Kakashi-sensei wouldn't want you to waste time like this…"

"All we can do for him now is move forward."

Sakura's green eyes jerked up to look at him, and they roved over his face as if they were searching for something. Sai found himself wanting to step away, as if shifting to the side would hide him from the intense, desperate gleam in her piercing green eyes.

Finally, she seemed to find something in his dark, flat gaze that convinced her. She nodded, rubbing her forearm over her nose and sniffing once.

"You're right." her expression hardened and she seemed to collect herself, "I'm sorry Sai. Let's-"

"-Uuuahh," a low moan sounded loudly from the ground between them, "That is the last time I microwave grapes…"

"Naruto!"

Sakura dropped to her knees beside the Jinchuriki, hands fisting in the quickly-growing mud.

"How are you feeling?"

"Huh?" Naruto slowly propped himself up, rubbing at his head as he peered shrewdly at her through squinted eyes, "Sakura-chan did you change my outfit while I was sleeping? It's all black and grey now and there's all these tears in it-just like those expensive jeans you bought that one time."

"What. Why would I-" she stammered, flushing angrily, "You weren't sleeping, you idiot!"

"That's right, Naruto-chan," Sai cut in boldly, smiling sharply as Naruto's expression congealed into a caricature of horror at the impromptu suffix, "You decided to dive head-first into an explosion, smash your pea-brain against the unforgiving surface of several large boulders, and use an enormous waterfall as a slip-n-slide! How marvelous of you!"

Two pairs of eyes stared back at him in alarm. The rain drummed down around them, filling the growing silence.

"… Kakashi-sensei taught me sarcasm." He felt the need to explain.

"Haha wow!" Naruto laughed, "You sounded like a human-being, Sai!"

Sakura bonked the blonde on the head.

"Thank you." Sai bowed, certain that he was being complimented. A distinctive warmth filled him at the sight of Naruto's grinning face and Sakura's relieved smile.

How curious it was that he should be experiencing so many different emotions in such a short span of time!

Absently, the artist marveled at the number of emotions he had been party to and witnessed in the last few minutes, ticking them off inside his head.

Confusion, distress, concern, guilt, lust (he was pretty sure Sakura's thoughts had been positively euphoric when she had stared at him that one time), relief, and now smugness at his own practiced wit.

Perhaps he was undergoing something similar to the PMS that Sakura had explained to him so haltingly that one time? He pondered this, trying to determine if he would need to borrow one of her tampon devices. He understood that they were crucial to regulating the flow of one's emotional discharge…

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto yelped suddenly, just now catching up to the instance in their conversation when their leader had last been mentioned, "What happened-where's Kakashi-sensei? I… he fell in the water. Did you-"

"-Naruto, he…" Sakura paused and corrected herself, "We didn't get to him in time." She laid her hand on the Jinchuriki's shoulder, catching Sai by surprise.

Hadn't she just been mowing down forests at the mention of Kakashi only moments before?

He peered at her contemplatively. Her expression was carefully neutral, but Sai suspected that she was mentally bracing herself for Naruto's reaction-

-That, or she had already applied a tampon to her emotional discharge… He really needed to get some of those.

Naruto frowned, jolting Sai out of his mental shopping list.

"Oh…" Naruto blinked, "Okay then."

Sakrua rocked back on her heels at this, her pink brows raised. Sai tensed, unsure what to make of Naruto's dispassionate answer.

In his experience, the blonde Jinchuriki was never dispassionate about _anything_.

"O-Okay then?" the pink-haired medic's voice wavered in alarm as she repeated the statement.

Sai imagined this was rather how it felt when one was enclosed within a high-security fortress and one of your teammates accidently knocked the pin out of a grenade…

"Yeah," Naruto huffed and pushed himself up, wiping the mud off his pants unconcernedly.

He frowned, sensing their strange looks and, as if he were stating the obvious said, "We'll just go get him then. Right?"

Sai blinked, stunned… He wasn't serious? Naruto couldn't honestly think that-

-The chances that Kakashi-sensei had survived that fall while unconscious, injured, and unable to use chakra were next to none.

The Jinchuriki himself had dived into the rapids in a wild attempt to save the man…

Sai felt his brow crease and he opened his mouth to correct his teammate, but snapped it closed at the sudden prickling sensation of his hair rising on the back of his neck. His eyes narrowed and his gaze slid over to the forest beside him. What was that?

"Oh, Naruto…" Sakura's green eyes were wet with tears and she shook her head minutely, clearly at a loss for what to say, "Hes-"

"Quiet." Sai whispered, cutting her off, "Someone is coming."

The three of them whipped their heads around to stare intently into the shadowed forest. A cold breeze, at once ominous and steadying, whirled through a break in the trees into the small clearing, bringing with it a hissing spray of scattered rain droplets and stray leaves. Thunder cracked loudly overhead.

Silently, they strained their ears and listened.

Leaves rustled faintly but, through the steady, drizzling rain, there was the hushed sound of light footfalls speeding towards them.

It was immediately clear to them that they had seconds before the unknown intruder came upon them.

Sai allowed himself a brief moment of discomfort. Now, of all times, would have been a good time for their team leader to _not_ have foolishly jumped onto a wildly careening speedboat while injured and on the cusp of unconsciousness; engage the driver of said vehicle in combat, and ride it, as it sailed majestically through the air, over the top of an enormously unexpected waterfall …

With a quick nod to his teammates, Sai slipped back behind a thick, mossy tree to the right of the small clearing they had found, receding into the shadows like a specter in the mist.

Sakura mirrored his actions and positioned herself directly across from him on the left side of the clearing, her green eyes peeking out sharply from between the thin fronds of a fern.

Naruto's hands sped through a series of hand-signs and five shadow-clones tumbled into existence around him. They all sprang up, leaping from tree-trunk to tree-trunk, and scattered throughout the dense canopy above, hiding themselves soundlessly.

They waited in tense silence, the fine rain misting over their hunched figures, listening as the footfalls grew closer to their small clearing.

...

* * *

...

Yori checked anxiously over his shoulder, his wide hazel eyes flitting anxiously over the tangled undergrowth receding rapidly behind him.

They couldn't have noticed anything. There's no way that they'd noticed…

He _really_ hoped they hadn't noticed.

It had only been about thirteen minutes since he had finished the parameters of his mission: drive the speedboat, engage the target, escape with target, and inject said target with the assigned substance.

Easy, done.

It had been six minutes since the commencement of his _own_ plan…

Not so easy, not so done.

Yori quickly categorized all of the items he had stolen from the target, already deciding what they would be needed for.

All of the white-haired man's smaller, more common weapons, like his kunai and shurikan, had to be sold immediately. Yori had his own anyway.

Half of the smoke-bombs and steel cutting wire could rake in some nice money too, but he would need to keep the other half for himself for when they caught on to his plan and started pursuing him. He wasn't the best trap-setter, but it might slow them down.

But the main source of income would definitely come from the extensive collection of scrolls that he man had carried on his person.

Some of them had looked like small summoning scrolls, the type that would bring in extra weapons, while others, judging by their clean, unused appearance, might hold the blue-prints to some sort of half-finished original jutsu the man had been working on. If he could find the right bidder, Yori was sure that he could earn himself a small fortune from those.

He felt a keen sense of disappointment as he remembered how he had dropped and been forced to leave the thickest, oldest, and probably the most valuable of all the scrolls behind. Who knows what had been in that scroll?

_It doesn't matter,_ he told himself, _As long as I get out of here it doesn't matter._

He just needed to get enough money off the stolen goods to buy a boat ticket to a port further south-and then he could hightail it on foot out of River Country and escape further into the North. Snow country was supposed to be nice this time of year, maybe-

How much time did he have? Yori whipped his head back over his shoulder again and quickly ran through the math for what might have been the hundredth time.

Half an hour allotted to complete the job; that evened out to about twelve minutes before he was expected back. Three, maybe five minutes before they sent someone after him... That equaled out to a twenty to twenty-two minute head start. The math was solid, this could work.

It had to work.

Because Yori really didn't think that, when Hijame caught on to his plan and sent a small band of upper-levels after him, captured him, and brought him back to his assigned base to have him publicly executed-he didn't think he could face that without crying. And, he'd promised his brother that-

-well they weren't going to catch him and that wasn't going to happen, so he didn't need to worry about that.

… But worry he did.

And maybe that was why, as he sprinted frantically through the steadily darkening forest, the young man didn't notice the trap until he was right on top of them.

One second he was flitting through a sea undulating leaves and stinging rain, and the next something cool and slimy had tangled around his legs, sending him flipping head-over-heels down to the mossy, root-tangled ground below.

Yori landed on his side with a painful crunch, his head bouncing off the ground.

"Uughh," he let out a low groan, his face scrunched in pain. _Shit…_

He tried to roll himself over-only to have a black, high-heeled boot stamp viciously on his shoulder and knock him, breathlessly, back to the ground.

_Shit! Shit! Shit!_

How did this happen? How had they caught up to him already? There was no way that they had-they must have suspected something!

Yori squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to breathe around the fear clogging his chest.

"Oh god, oh god no, please…" he whimpered.

"Look at me." a voice above him ordered cooly.

A thick sob curled in his throat, but Yori swallowed it down and forced himself, shivering in the cool mud, to pry his eyes open and look his captor in the face. The rain heightened in intensity. It pounded mercilessly down on him, stinging his face and making his eyelids flinch.

"You!"

He recoiled instinctively, cowering-and then, jerking and gasping in surprise, the boy realized that the voice he was hearing wasn't gravelly or deep.

Yori tilted his head against the falling rain and blinked his eyes, hardly daring to hope that he was at the mercy of a stranger.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Bright green eyes framed in long, clumped lashes glared down at him frostily, narrowed and furious like a cat's, through straggles of limp, pink hair. Yori just stared.

"_Answer_ me when I'm talking to you, dammit!" his captor snarled and she grinded the heel of her boot into Yori's shoulder. He hissed sharply in pain and instinctively tried to wriggle away, but she had him pinned.

"I would suggest that you do as she says," a steady, bland voice issued clearly from the other side of the clearing and a pale, dark-haired boy stepped out of the trees, "The hag can be quite nasty when she encounters resistance."

_Hag?_ The young woman leering at him darkly against the backdrop of the murky, purpling sky looked many things, but "hag" wasn't one of them. Yori resisted the urge to laugh wildly.

"Can it, Sai." She snapped, tilting her head to rebuke the boy over her shoulder even as her piercing green orbs stayed locked on Yori's prone form. Her dark-haired companion, Sai, stalked silently over and took his place next to her, gazing down at their captive coldly, his expression flat and unreadable.

"This is the young assailant who drove the speedboat and went over the waterfall with Kakashi-sensei. How curious."

There was a distinct rustling of leaves above them, but Yori's attention was quickly diverted when the pink-haired girl gasped, whipped out a kunai, and shoved it against his neck. Yori gagged.

"Where is he? What have you done with-" she broke off, her eyes widening in horrified shock as she took in the extra weaponry and scrolls that Yori had stuffed into the compartments of his scuffed, gray imitation ANBU vest.

Yori quickly began to gather chakra in his hand, staring up at her with a not-entirely faked expression of apprehension and fear. Hopefully, because of his unique chakra, she wouldn't be able to sense it.

She didn't notice.

Yori resisted the urge to grin slightly, turns out that there are perks to having a genetic mutation that causes one to have no chakra affinity after all.

"Those are Kakashi-sensei's!" she exclaimed, wild anger coloring her voice, "You stole-" she bent down over him, reaching with one hand for the pockets on his chest and holding a kunai to his neck with the other-Yori interrupted her mid-sentence.

Jerking the arm at his side up in a motion so fast that even he couldn't track it, Yori caught her arm around her wrist. The kunai at his neck twitched and she froze; her sparkling green eyes wide in half-comprehending surprise, and _screamed_.

A rush of heat swirled up through the palm of his hand where his skin touched hers. His unique chakra absorbed her sparkling blue chakra, sucking it up through the chakra pathways of his forearm in a flurry of ravenous hunger. Her wild, furious energy exploded powerfully up through him as he leeched a miniscule taste of her chakra into his own body.

But, knowing that he had less than a second before she recovered from the shock and pain of his attack, Yori hiked his legs up under her and, gathering a portion of her own chakra in his legs, he kicked her roughly in the chest.

She flew off him.

A choked scream of terrified surprise split the air as her body shot back, flipping wildly through the stinging rain. She landed with a tremendous, earth-rattling crash into the trees lining the edge of the clearing behind her. Not one second later, splintered shards of broken wood still exploding into the droplet-strewn air, a furious rumble of echoing thunder boomed loudly overhead.

"Good God…"

Yori staggered dazedly to his feet, staring after her in horrified alarm-What the hell kind of a monster was she? Who would have thought that a watered down, flimsy imitation of her own chakra would do _that_?

He wasn't given a chance to think about it. Almost immediately, as soon as he had kicked the girl off of him, her dark-haired assailant had whipped out a small notebook and begun to scribble in it furiously. Yori whipped around to face him.

A horde of charging oxen, enormous and outlined in sleek lines of glistening black, erupted into the sheets of pouring rain and thundered towards him suddenly.

Yori, his hazel eyes widening in shock, stumbled backwards at the sight of the monsters flying towards him, his muscles locking in rigid terror.

His bare feet stumbled over a patch of soggy moss and he slipped and crashed to the ground, landing on his back with a frightened yelp. The behemoths thundered towards him, shaking the ground with each juddering step. Wild panic whirled through him.

Instinctively, in a reflexive motion that had saved his life countless times, Yori twisted around, gathering the remains of the girl's sapped chakra into his fists, and flopped onto his side, bringing his chakra-strengthened hands slamming into the ground as he curled into a ball.

An earth-shattering wave of raw power exploded out from where his fists made contact with the ground beneath him, shooting enormous ripples of furious, unchecked energy blasting out in waves that crumbled the earth around him.

The charging oxen stumbled over the cracking landscape, their thick legs twisting and snapping as the earth split and erupted beneath them, and they exploded in a sudden spray of stinging black ink. Yori scrambled to his feet.

And then, before he could so much as draw a weapon, the dark-haired boy was on him, swinging a short silver blade through the sleeting rain with battering force.

He had just enough time to catch a glimpse of hard, blank black eyes glaring at him with a placid steadiness that was so cold it was unnerving, and then the boy struck-Yori jerked his arms up in a reflexive block.

Searing pain exploded through him. Yori cried out sharply as the icy steel of the blade cut into the bare skin of his forearms, the slender blade singing as it sliced through the droplet-saturated air.

Blood splattered up in a vibrant spray of red. Yori fell to the ground. Muddy water blossomed up around him as his body crashed to the forest floor. He curled in on himself, hugging his shredded arms to his chest. In the midst of the heated pain blaring loudly in the forefront of his mind, Yori was distantly aware of the thunderous approach of the girl he had thrown off him earlier.

How had everything gone so wrong, so fast?

A sharp glint of shining metal shimmered above him through the pounding rain as the dark-haired boy raised his arm high to strike again. Yori gasped, paralyzed with pain and terror.

The sludgy earth vibrated under him, pools of murky water sloshing over his cheek and into his grimacing mouth, as the pink-haired girl with the enormous chakra sped towards him. Leaves shuddered and flapped wildly in the dense canopy above them.

Yori squeezed his eyes shut, a sharp sob of helpless fear spilling out as he braced himself-

-for an attack that never came. A cool rush of swirling air and scattered rain swept over him just as a loud clashing of metal rang out sharply above him. A heartbeat later several thumps of landing feet splashed down on the soggy ground, forming a scattered ring around him. Yori squinted his eyes open.

Standing directly before him, his slender legs dressed in a charred orange and black jumpsuit, a blond-haired boy stood resolutely between Yori and the pale, dark-haired shinobi, a steely kunai glinting as it held off the other's sharp, slender blade. Several shadow clones crouched defensively around him in various battle-ready stances, their blue eyes tense and narrowed.

"Naruto…" the black-haired boy breathed, his dark, flat eyes flashing in a brief moment of recognition.

"What are you doing, Sai?" The blonde boy's voice was calm and soft, but a powerful undercurrent of anger roiled faintly beneath the surface.

"I-" Yori watched in amazement as his unexpected protector, who was apparently a teammate of the pale boy and the pink-haired girl, cut his friend off mid-word.

"Calm down. He's not going anywhere."

The black-haired boy, Sai Yori remembered he had been called, stepped back concisely, bowing his head.

"Now…" an undeniable rush of foreboding swept through Yori.

The blonde-haired boy, Naruto, turned his head slightly to look back at Yori over his shoulder. Yori gasped. Electric blue eyes, dizzying in their ferocity, glared down at him, narrowed and menacing through strands of thin, feathery blonde hair. They whipped about the boy's unnaturally bright eyes, casting them in shadow as the angry wind buffeted them over his steely gaze. Yori shivered.

"Tell us. What did you do to Kakashi-sensei?"

…

* * *

...

"What _was_ that?" Kakashi huffed as he pushed himself shakily to his knees, his half-gloved fingers scraping over the pebbles scattered through the wet, grainy mud. He looked around himself a little wildly, feeling distinctly paranoid.

"Why did he feel the need to _molest_ me?"

The foreign substance that the cruel, clearly gender-confused young man had injected into him still thrummed heatedly through his body, bringing with it an unusual lilt of confusion and anxiety to his voice.

"Damn druggies and their pushy-_I didn't want your crack_!" Kakashi interrupted his half-conscious mumbling with a defiant yell, swinging his fist vehemently at the trees behind him. The motion brought with it a sudden whirl of sparking pain. He collapsed, gasping and cringing, back into the mud.

Kakashi whined lowly and closed his eyes as a cloud of popping black dots hovered lazily into his vision.

Right. He forgot-he was injured… Ow.

The jounin panted wetly through his mask, swaying a little in his half-kneeling position, and forced himself into stillness as he rode out the pain.

Finally, after an indeterminate period of time, Kakashi staggered to his feet. His pulse fluttered loudly in his ears and he hugged his shattered elbow gently to his body, shivering pathetically in his mud-slicked clothes. Things couldn't be worse.

His pants dropped to his ankles with a final, resounding _shlump_.

…

"Why does this keep happening to me?" Kakashi whimpered, turning his face up to the grumbling dark sky in fervent supplication, as if, sopping wet and shivering, he could entice an explanation from the heavens.

Seriously. Partial nudity was so not on his list of things to do today.

But, never one to loaf around in self-pity, the Copy-ninja forced himself to bend down and pluck a kunai up from the random scattering of items that had been dropped in the mud, left behind when the young thief had taken flight.

"These were good pants…" Kakashi sighed ruefully and stepped gingerly out of the clothes puddled around his sandals. Keeping his injured arm folded closely to his side, he yanked his mask down, placed the handle of the kunai between his grimacing teeth, and lifted up his soggy trousers with his free hand.

Shivering slightly as a chilly gust of wind brought a faint spray of icy rain sprinkling over him, Kakashi raised the waistband of his pants up to the kunai in his mouth.

He paused for a moment and let himself lament for a brief moment over how, if his beautiful young spring maiden were to stumble upon him now-she would probably just laugh at him and go back to her secret, erotic village alone.

Nope, no magical love encounters for Hatake Kakashi. Not ever.

Pushing the tangled tapestry of his tragic love-life behind him, the Copy-ninja sliced a long slit into the side of his pants with a sharp jerk of his head. Spitting out the kunai, brief thoughts of his friend Genma coming to mind at the movement, Kakashi stepped back into his now thoroughly-shredded pants.

What he wouldn't give to be back in his cozy little apartment, wrapped snugly in his shurikan-printed quilt, reading his weathered first copy of Icha Icha…

The jounin pursed his lips slightly as he, one-handedly, tied the two sides of the jagged slit together over the side of his hip.

"Hmm..." He glanced down at his impromptu wardrobe modification, noting the unattractive bulge of a knot at his side and the consequent wrinkles, "Well it won't be winning any fashion prizes, but it'll do."

…

* * *

...

"So what you're saying is, our sensei didn't die after he fell comatose, injured, and chakraless over the largest waterfall in the nation-and that _you_ injected a lethal poison into his bloodstream?" The pretty, pink-haired girl, who he had recently discovered (through a jumbled assault of screams and growls) was called Sakura, yelled at him.

Yori stammered wordlessly back at her, wondering at what point exactly during his interrogation the role of interrogator had been awarded to the vicious, ear-drum bursting female. The other two boys cowered behind her.

"No!" Yori jerked in his bonds, unconsciously trying to raise his hands up in a placating gesture, "No, I didn't! It-Ow!" he gasped as the movement brought a wild, stinging throb of pain to his sluggishly bleeding forearms. God this was the worst.

"Oh. So what you're saying is that you just _accidently_ happened to kidnap our sensei and, by some crazy random happenstance inject a lethal poison into his bloodstream?"

"What? No, I-"

Sakura growled fiercely and, her hands bunching into fists at her sides, she stomped sharply between Yori's spread legs infrustration.

"Eeh!" He recoiled back, flinching. Was she trying to castrate him or something? This was ridiculous!

"Ngh-I can't tell you anything when you keep interrupting me!" He cut himself off mid-whimper and then shivered at his own audacity.

_Oh shit, I've gone and done it now…_

Sakura snarled, and Yori swore he saw the veins in her slender arms _bulge_ as her fists clenched even tighter.

"Oh god." He muttered absently, staring up at her with wide, horrified eyes. She looked like she was trying to sprout another limb…

Sakura suddenly dropped to a crouch over him, her high-heeled boots pressing into the soggy ground on either side of his thigh, and fisted a petite hand in his hair, jerking his head back. She pressed her face uncomfortably close to his, her eyes narrowed and her teeth clenching. The rain pounded down around them.

Her lips curled back in a ferocious snarl, clearly displeased. Yori didn't even try to hide the panicked terror in his eyes. _Who even makes faces like that?_ He thought wildly.

"What did you just-" she paused and jerked back slightly, her livid expression suddenly slipping into one of faint surprise, "Oh. Wow-you have a really unique eye-color."

Yori paled under his freckles.

"Help me! She's crazy!" He burst out, pleading to the two other boys quivering in the background.

"What!" she yelped, affronted, and then growled again, leaning in close, "You jerk-I was giving you a compliment! Don't you know that when a lady-"

"Sakura-chan, he didn't mean-"

"-typical macho attitude! I wasn't coming onto you, you self-absorbed little-"

"-Sakura-san, you're illegitimate sexual advances are really of no consequence to-"

"Please don't let her be the one to kill me!"

"-you're not even wearing shoes! I would never like a guy who didn't wear shoes!"

"Sakura-chan! That's mean! What if he left them at a friend's house? You shouldn't-"

"You dumb, little turd, what makes you think that I would ever-"

"-the penis is a far better indicator-"

"Sai! Why the hell would you mention manparts in front of a lady! As if I want to hear about-"

"-that one time, and I had to run around the village in just my socks and it was very cold and rainy, so my toes-"

"Ohmygod!" Yori gasped out, his head reeling, "It wasn't a poison! I didn't inject him with a poison! It was a recently synthesized strain of bacteria that rebuilds its anatomical structure to model the chakra it is first exposed to, and it only reacts when it comes into contact with that specific chakra! I injected him with bacteria that had been aligned solely with the chakra of one of the higher-ups, so that when he-"

"Woah, wait. Hold on." Sakura's fury-clouded face cleared and she stumbled back a step, "Say that again."

Yori, panting from his previous outburst, looked up at her apprehensively through surprised, widened eyes. Crap. What was he doing?

He had just told the teammates of Hijame's new target highly classified information that he himself wasn't even under express permission to know.

And every second longer this brain-rattling conversation went on was another second closer to Hijame finding out he had tried to run away. And then…

"Hey! Are you listening to me?"

He could just imagine a fleet of those upper-levels crowing with malicious joy as they set out after him, the perverse delight in their eyes as they gathered their weapons and boasted over who would hurt him the worst. Who could make him cry the hardest…

"Hey!"

And then, after he'd been beaten and torn to ribbons, barely conscious and shivering with pain and fear, they would drag him up to the execution pedestal and then he'd start to sob, pleading and begging for them not to kill him like they'd killed-

"Hey." a small hand, surprisingly gentle and soft, grabbed his chin and directed his distant, petrified gaze over to a pair of steady, intense green orbs, "Calm down."

A wet sob tumbled thickly out of Yori's chest and he realized he was hyperventilating.

"It's okay. We're not going to hurt you. Shhh…"

Just over her shoulders Yori could see her two teammates standing just behind her, looking down at him. Naruto's eyes were bright with alarmed concern.

"Don't worry, uh…" she moved her hands down to his shoulders, patting them awkwardly, casting a helpless glance over her shoulder to her friends. Yori, still panting harshly, let his head fall forwards. He just felt so weak and tired-he didn't even care that he was crying in front of a girl.

"Look. I-I'm sorry that I yelled at you. I can get a little… emotional sometimes…"

"Yeah, yeah she does." was muttered behind her faintly.

"Shut up!" she jerked around and hissed quietly, "I'm _trying_ to be a nice, thoughtful individual!"

Yori closed his eyes, an exhausted, disbelieving grin tugging at his lips. This was beyond ridiculous.

Sakura turned back to him, green eyes skipping over his slumped form anxiously.

"And I'm sorry Sai tried to saw your arms off." She continued, starting to gather momentum, "That wasn't part of the plan either. It's just," her voice caught then and Yori lifted his head to look up at her, weakly, "We need your help… You know something about what's going on here and what happened to our sensei. We need you to tell us everything you know."

"…Please," she said, and her voice sounded inexplicably weak and fervent, "You don't understand-we _need_ to get him back. It's… It's my fault that he's even in this situation… And if we were to lose him, I don't know what I-I wouldn't…" she choked, "It would be me that killed him."

Yori stared, dumbfounded.

"You…" he started, feeling disoriented in the wake of such raw emotion, "He's your leader, right? How come you… Why do you care about him so much?"

A slightly raspy voice spoke up suddenly from behind Sakura.

"Because Kakashi-sensei taught us that you don't abandon your teammates."

Sakura stepped back from Yori slowly and both of their eyes moved to fasten on the somber, steely expression on Naruto's whiskered face.

Yori couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"Remember, Sakura-chan?" Naruto's brilliant blue eyes flickered over to Sakura's tear-filled gaze and thunder rumbled profoundly overhead, the sky now ferocious and dark over the thrashing treetops, "'Ninja who break the rules are regarded as scum. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum'. That's what he always said."

Yori blinked away the rainwater filling his eyes, his chest straining against his bonds with each heavy breath. What _was_ this?

He could only remember feeling that way, that fierce loyalty and unwavering admiration, for one person in the world… And it most certainly hadn't been his leader or those guys on his team who used to beat him into a bloody, quivering pulp whenever things got slow. These… these people…

They were different somehow.

"He's done more for everyone here than I could tell you. He's a genuinely good person who values the lives of others above his own and he's saved each of us more times than I can count…It's just…"

"Without him, without Kakashi-sensei… Everything's broken."

…

* * *

...

"It's about time you called! I was starting to-Woah…" Pakkun's chiding tone splintered off into uneasy concern, "You okay there, pup?"

His pack crowded around him, their tails wagging uncertainly, as he stepped forwards and nudged his cool, wet nose solicitously against Kakashi's ankle.

The only response this earned was a slow traveling of the man's gloved hands up to the sides of his head, where they stopped; pale fingers curling into the soft silvery strands to fist tightly against his skull. Kakashi stared forwards blankly; his slender body folded in a huddled crouch, and gasped shakily.

"Kakashi!" Pakkun barked, rising up on his back legs to press his front paws to the jounin's knees, "Snap out of it!"

"Huunnh… I…" he breathed out slowly, and Pakkun noticed with sharp alarm how the man's visible eye seemed to be following an invisible script, the dusky black of his dilated pupil flitting blindly back and forth as if he couldn't see the world in front of him. Kakashi's slanted brow, dewy with sweat and plastered with tendrils of wayward silver hair, creased.

"N-no!" The dogs whined and scattered wildly in alarm when Kakashi suddenly thrashed about and fell back, flailing, into the mud.

Pakkun leaped back, his brown eyes wide. What was going on?

"Please! You don't-you don't have to-" Kakashi gasped and shuddered terribly, his mouth falling open in a breathless gasp and his visible eye squeezing closed in an expression of acute pain.

"What's going on? Why is he-"

"-need to get him emergency treatment! He smells wrong, I don't-"

"Oy!" Pakkun barked sharply, stilling the pack's frantic movements. They all turned their worried faces towards him, searching for reassurance, their tongues lolling out, panting.

"Calm down…" the small dog issued a firm layer of steady authority into his gravelly voice, "We'll find out what's wrong with him and _then_ we'll decide if we need to go for help."

Stepping forward decisively, he trotted over to the white-haired man. But, despite his strong, unflappable attitude, a distinct flare of unease licked through him at the sight of his young master lying belly-up in the mud, clutching at his head and gasping as if something were trying to claw its way out of his skull.

Out of all the Hatakes he'd served in his long life, generation after generation of majestic, powerful warriors-how was it that it was _this_ _one_ who had managed to get so close to him? That it was the young man crumpled before him, who was still little more than a pup in the ninken's eyes, who never failed to pull at his heartstrings and worry him into insanity?

Pakkun had fathered many younglings in his time, with many a fine dame he might add, but he'd never really saw himself as parental or truly loyal to someone who needed him-until Kakashi.

He had sort of fancied himself a lone wolf, rogue-ish type.

But, that had all changed from the first moment he'd met Kakashi.

He still remembered the shock he'd felt when, after nearly a decade of waiting for his new master, he was jolted out of an exhilarating hunt and transported, snarling and bristling, right into the middle of a dilapidated, creaking old shed-only to be greeted by the wide, glistening gray eyes of a thin, waifish child-whose pale, bruise-splotched face and wild, tufty white hair did little to detract from the devilish, slightly manic grin that broke out over the boy's face at the sight of him.

... That, and Pakkun had been none too happy to discover that, unlike during the years he'd spent under his last master, he now looked nothing like the ferocious, sharp-toothed beast he'd been before.

He supposed his different form had something to do with the fact that, when his last master had first summoned him, the imperious man had _not_ been an orphaned, mistreated, unloved slip of a child-who had, resiliently and without complaint, been living off of garbage scraps in the broken down shed of his foster family's backyard for the past three weeks.

Shaking his head, Pakkun pushed away the thorny tangle of memories and forced himself to return to the present. He had to find out what was wrong with Kakashi.

A loud crack of thunder burst powerfully in the dark sky overhead, whisking a sheet of stinging, icy rain down upon them from the heavens. The trees lining the shallow, pebbly beach bowed under a harsh gust of wind, their leaves twisting and flipping frantically on their stems.

His pack whined and huddled closer, Bull stomping up to sit with a forlorn splash in the mud right against Kakashi's back. Pakkun stepped forwards.

As his paws came up softly beside the Copy-ninja's head, the white feathery strands tumbling wetly into the dark mud, Pakkun lowered his head to sniff over the man's prone form and Kakashi breathed out a barely audible whimper.

Pakkun's fuzzy, wrinkled brow furrowed and he paused. He ran his tongue in a quick, soothing lick over Kakashi's ear and then continued to run his nose over the jounin.

"What have you gotten yourself into now, little one?"

…

* * *

...

"Yes," Yori stressed, for the umpteenth time, annoyance coloring his tone now, "Your sensei, Hatashi Kakate-"

"Hatake Kakashi!"

"Whatever! Your sensei is Hijame's new target." He looked Sakura plainly in the face, willing her to understand,"He's working with that Izanami woman to-"

"Izanami!" Sakura spat, her green eyes widening in furious alarm, "I knew something was up-That _bitch_!"

"Right. Well she wants-"

"Wait, wait wait!" Naruto whined helplessly from behind him, where he worked fastidiously on severing Yori's bonds without hurting him, "I still don't understand the whole poison thing!"

Sai, his gloved hand lifted absently as a visor for his eyes against the drumming rain, sighed agitatedly.

"Ow!" Yori winced as a particularly sharp tug sent a stab of pain throbbing through his forearms, "I told you! It wasn't a poison, it was a bacteria!"

"Bac-ter-i-a… " Naruto mouthed the word lowly, frowning, "Do you mean germs?"

"God…" Yori huffed, his eyes closed in fervent disbelief. How had these people managed to capture him again?

"Yes, Naruto!" Sakura cut off the blonde, seeing that he was about to open his mouth and waste time with more elementary definitions, "That's right! Now go on…" she nodded wildly to Yori from her perch in a nearby tree, her hands moving rapidly as she tied together the foliage to form an impromptu shelter form the ceaseless rain.

"Right. Well this bacteria was recently synthesized-that means created," he edited for Naruto's benefit, "-back in a lab in Suna. What it does is, the first time it's exposed to someone's chakra, it changes its anatomical structure-it's uh, shape-to _match_ it."

"Gotcha. Like an octopus."

"Like a? What-"

"Don't listen to him; he's just trying to sound smart." Sakura cut in sharply, oblivious to the emphatically defiant wails this elicited from her teammate, "Just keep going."

"The bacteria that I injected into your friend had already been aligned with the chakra of one of the upper-levels." Yori explained, spitting out rainwater distractedly, "So it was sort of like I injected some of the upper-level's chakra into your sensei… But not, cause it was a bacteria strain, not a-"

His bonds fell away from him, landing with a soft splash in the growing mud beneath him. Yori felt the sudden shifting of Naruto behind him as the boy stood slowly to his feet. All of a sudden, the thick, rain-filled air seemed to sharpen around him.

Yori remembered that, despite the trio's strange camaraderie, they were still tense, dangerous… If they didn't like what they heard, they could very well decide to finish what they'd started. He stiffened.

"Here," he flinched when Sakura's light voice rang out again through the pounding rain, "Come here and I'll heal you." Naruto and Sai were already scurrying (or, in Sai's case, stalking) over to the impromptu shelter she now crouched under.

He hesitated.

"If you run, we'll just catch you again." She warned, somehow reading his mind. Yori sighed.

…

* * *

...

"We'll find another way!" Kakashi growled, "There's got to be another way!"

"No, listen to me, Rin-don't!"

His hands reached out weakly then, his gaze dark and desperate over the thin, soaked material of his mask. The dogs were quick to crowd him, tongues and tails wagging anxiously as the jounin's hands fisted desperately in their damp, shaggy fur. He cried out, a loud, hoarse cry that sent the fur bristling up over Pakkun's spine.

"Oh, god, Rin no…" He moaned lowly, burying his face in Shiba's side, shaking his head minutely, "Please… please no…" his shoulders shook, "This-no… Rin…"

Pakkun, resting back on his haunches beside the quietly sobbing man, cast his own gaze cursorily around the area… As if the stunted cries spilling out of his master, his friend didn't make him want to whine and scamper around just as helplessly as the rest of his pack.

It had been a couple minutes now, and, at this point, three things had become very clear to him.

Something had been done to Kakashi that made him smell off-kilter. Not necessarily unlike himself-but wrong. It was almost as if a nearly intangible layer of menace lurked, vicious and foreboding, just under the man's natural scent, seeping through and stinging Pakkun's nose with it's acerbic, cutting smell whenever he got too close. Whether it was a disease or some toxin, Pakkun didn't know.

Secondly, whatever it was that was causing (or at least contributing to) Kakashi's distress-there was nothing they could do about it. They'd tried everything, even nipping at the man's ticklish sides, and nothing they did seemed to rouse him. Kakashi was inconsolable. The only thing they could do was let his hands seek comfort in their soft summer coats, lick his face consolingly, and listen as the man they would give up their existence for relived one of the worst moments of his life.

And lastly, Pakkun realized with a heavy thrum of dread, even if there was something they could do to help him; they had no idea where they were. They were powerless.

"Rin…"

Kakashi's death-grip on Shiba seemed to lessen, and his heavy lid slipped back closed over his one visible eye, covering up his blind, horrified stare. He seemed to settle back into the mud, the distressed lines of his face slackening. Pakkun stood up quickly, his curly tail wagging in expectation. The Copy-ninja made no noise but for the faint huff of his breath puffing up weakly into the chilly mist.

"Kakashi?" the little pug trotted closer once again to the man, "Wake up now, pup…" He swiped his tongue anxiously over the jounin's pale, sweaty temple. Kakashi moaned faintly under his ministrations, his brow creasing again.

"C'mon now," Pakkun let a fine layer of rebuttal color his voice despite the worry knotting through him, "You're giving the boys quite a scare."

The white-haired man's visible eye-lid twitched slightly, as if he were fighting to surface from the shadowed throes of memory, and cracked open slowly.

"Mmm, Pakkun?"

…

* * *

...

"So…" Sakura drew out the word slowly, her brow furrowing in thought, "What does that do to him? The bacterium that has the anatomic structure of your 'upper-level', I mean."

She lifted her gaze earnestly to the uncertain, luminous hazel eyes of the boy before her, trying to instill a calming tingle into her healing chakra as she cradled his bloody forearms in her palms. His eyes connected briefly with hers, then flitted away.

"It…" he seemed to think about the best way to phrase his next sentence, which she didn't blame him, considering that it was Naruto who sat right next to him, "It would make it possible for the upper-level to cast a genjutsu on your sensei from far away."

Sakura stiffened.

"How far away?"

"Umm," he tilted his head back evasively, as if he were addressing the branch hanging over them, "Well distance doesn't matter actually. He could cast a genjutsu from anywhere."

Sai seemed to stop his silent perusal of the forest around them at this. Sakura watched the rogue-ninja shiver slightly as her teammate's flat, emotionless dark eyes swung around to stare at him.

"Then I think the question we should be asking is _from where_ will this genjutsu be cast?"

…

* * *

...

"Kakashi, what is going on?"

"I… Pakkun…"

"You scared us half to death, summoning us here in the middle of nowhere after God knows how long-only to collapse and start sniveling like a prepubescent little girl the moment you see us."

Kakashi's eyes widened and he froze in the middle of shaking his head groggily; his hand paused halfway through the ruffling of his thick, tousled white locks. A tinge of pink crept over the edge of his mask.

Pakkun stiffened; he hadn't meant to be that articulate. Whoops.

"Damn, you're articulate and sexist today." Kakashi ground out, glaring cooly at the little dog askance.

"…Sorry." Pakkun tried to look apologetic. Kakashi snorted.

The pack watched apprehensively, faint whines tumbling out as they crowded around their pack leader. Kakashi wincingly pushed himself back to his feet with one arm, and every so often one of the dogs would dart in to support him whenever he looked particularly unsteady. Pakkun shuffled his paws impatiently in the mud, flicking his ears mindlessly under the onslaught of sleeting rain.

"So, are you going to tell us what happened? Or is it too embarrassing?"

Kakashi ignored him.

"I summoned you all because I've been separated from my team, and I've lost track of my client."

Pakkun sighed. He hated it when the pup acted like this. Didn't he know that they were a pack-which, by definition, meant that no one had to handle anything alone?

"Kakashi…" he whined, brown eyes following the young man's hazy outline step away from the pack through the barrage of drilling rain. The other dogs glanced at each other uncertainly, half-comforted by their master's familiar closed-off behavior and half-distressed by it.

But, before Pakkun could begin to broach the subject again, Kakashi's low voice interrupted him.

"It's been going on for a while now actually…" he admitted softly.

Pakkun's heart lurched. To think that Kakashi had been suffering-and without them! …It put a bad taste in his mouth. The pack whimpered and stilled around him, several of them falling into a sit in the cold mud.

"I'm… I'm starting to think that it'll never get better."

Pakkun opened his muzzle to say something-a rush of senseless comfort building up to spill out-but then Kakashi turned his head slightly to look at him over his shoulder. The sheer exhaustion and helpless despair that he saw burning in that single gray, half-lidded orb was enough to steal his breath from his lungs.

"It's just that, every time I use chakra I see them… It's like I-"

Suddenly Kakashi jerked.

His spine stiffened ramrod-straight and his limbs locked rigidly into place, every inch of his already white skin paling, and his gray eye, which had been so dull before widened in inexpressible horror.

Pakkun frowned. Several of the dogs snapped to alert, leaping instantly to their feet, snarling.

"Kakashi, what're you-"

"Do you hear that?" his voice was hoarse and shaky. The Copy-nin shuddered fiercely.

"Hear what? I don't-"

But Kakashi's head was already whipping around frantically, unkempt strands of silky hair slinging out droplets of water with the wild movement. He stumbled forwards and then, still clasping his shattered arm tightly to his side, he promptly turned back around and started lurching towards the forest. Pakkun leaped after him, the other dogs hot on his heels.

"Hold it right there, pup!" he barked out, coming even with the white-haired man's legs just as they started to break into a run, "What's going on?"

"We need to find them. Now."

Kakashi's answer sent a jolt of true fear prickling down his spine.

Not because of what he said, but because of the flat, strained, inexpressibly urgent voice that he had said it in.

Pakkun hadn't heard the Copy-ninja use that tone since ANBU…

The thought sent a terrified shudder through him, and Pakkun sprang forwards with all of the strength he had in his little body. The dark cover of heavy, low-hanging clouds roiled and whirled threateningly over their heads as thick sheets of rain pelted down steadily upon them.

…

* * *

...

_Thanks for reading! If you wish to review, I'll get back to you as soon as I can :)  
_

_~Flinty  
_


	22. Chapter 22

**...**

_Nostalgia_

**...**

Thin, muddy ribbons of water trickled sluggishly down the dirt walls sloping into the streambed below. The wind howled shrilly as it raced through the dense line of forest fencing in either side of the shallow basin. Wet leaves flew restlessly into the air in a cacophony of harsh, stinging rain.

Hijame squinted his eyes and tilted his face into the furious onslaught. Otherwise he remained motionless, taciturn and unaffected in the face of nature's fury. At his side, shivering slightly from the cool water rushing past his knees, a gaunt man stood resolutely in the stream with him. The man's spindly arms were raised and his hands clasped together in the sign of a genjutsu.

In just a manner of minutes everything would come together.

Hijame's part of the underhanded deal he'd made with Izanami would be completed. He would capture Hatake Kakashi and deliver him to the daimyo's wife. The illustrious copy-ninja would be whisked away to the River Country's underground fighting ring. And, just like so many powerful shinobi who had been captured by Hijame before him, Kakashi would fight to the death. He would die helpless, broken-down, and alone, a mere shadow of the powerful man he had once been. A specter of the warrior who had demolished Hijame's base of operations months earlier... And people would pay to see it.

Izanami, who had founded the whole operation out of economic necessity, always gave him a share of the sums. That was how the deal went. And Hijame had gone along with it, using what little money he earned to rebuild his forces, never asking for more or showing any sign of his growing displeasure.

But this time things would go a little differently...

Hijame smirked in the face of the battering rain, a cruel lilt twisting his lips. His underhanded partnership with Izanami had arisen out of necessity-he had needed money and she had needed muscle. It had served them both well up to this point... But Hijame was never one to be satisfied with just getting by. He had greater plans, higher aspirations for the future-he'd just been waiting for the right opportunity.

And now, as he stood firmly against the muddy flow of the stream, the pounding rain lashing down at him with a sheet of cutting wind-it was clear to him that, after years of waiting, he'd finally found such an opportunity.

And it was found in the existence of one man. Hatake Kakashi.

An amused grin split Hijame's wet face and he barked out a laugh. The upper-level standing shakily at his side jumped.

...

* * *

...

"Alright," Sakura rose to her feet, brushing her hands decisively over her muddy skirt, "You're going to lead us there."

Naruto watched curiously as their captive's hazel eyes widened and his jaw clenched shut, his spine stiffening in poorly-disguised horror. The Jinchuriki frowned, looking askance at Sai, but his teammate's face was as bland and non-inquisitive as ever beneath the sleeting rain. Was he the only one who thought something wasn't right here?

The young rogue-nin seemed to try and say something then, but all that came out was a jumbled stammer of vowels. He swallowed hard, his chest heaving slightly. A slow-building set of tremors took hold of the rogue-nin and the boy shook his head, staring at them with bright, horrified eyes.

Naruto's stomach twisted uncomfortably. This wasn't how bad guys were supposed to act... right?

"You're going to lead us to where Hijame has set up this ambush for our sensei." Sakura's green eyes narrowed and a layer of steel slid into her voice, "And you're going to do it now. Stand up."

Their captive rose dazedly to his feet and stared down at the mud sloshing between his toes. Naruto watched him, for the first time fully taking in his appearance.

The boy's hair was a mess of feathery, auburn spikes. They reached nearly to his eyes. The sides of his head were closely shaved in what was obviously intended to be a military look. But somehow, with his wide eyes and timid expression, it only served to cast him in a fragile light. His skin was the color of someone who loved the sun but had been kept in the dark for too long. Across the bridge of his nose and spreading out over one cheekbone, a constellation of freckles stood out boldly over his pale skin. Overall he seemed to have open, boyish features that leaned towards the more delicate, feminine side of the male spectrum. He was just a kid.

Naruto looked over the boy's clothes and frowned, seeing how faded and weather-beaten they were. Everything was riddled with holes and tears. Any color that might have once brightened the rogue-ninja's outfit had been long-since washed out, leaving behind a nearly indiscernible collection of dull browns, greens, and greys. He wore only a simple pair of calf-length pants, a plain t-shirt, and a scuffed imitation ANBU vest that was filled with stolen goods. No sandals, and no jacket to protect him from the elements. The boy stood quietly before them, his bony shoulders hunched and his head cowed against the rain. He seemed, despite his young face, to be about their age and perhaps a little taller than Sakura.

Was this really the guy who had somehow overpowered the famed Copy-ninja, sent him tumbling over an enormous waterfall, and injected some weird germ thing into him? Naruto's blue eyes stared at the boy doubtfully. He didn't know what to think.

"Go!" Sakura snapped, breaking Naruto out of his muddled thoughts. Her hands had curled into fists.

The rain spilled over them ceaselessly, and the Jinchuriki felt a shiver travel up his spine at the sight of the dark frown growing on his teammate's face. Thunder clapped loudly over their heads. He'd seen that look before... but on someone else.

Sakura stepped closer to the rogue-nin. Her arms shook with barely subdued strength.

"We don't have anymore time to waste." she spoke through her teeth, "You need to show us. Right. Now."

The boy flinched and staggered back a few steps. He stared at them all, his chest rising and falling visibly. Naruto's stomach twisted at the look of fear in the boy's eyes.

"NOW!" Sakura snarled.

The rogue-ninja spun round and leaped into the tossing branches. Sakura and Sai sprung after him, cutting through the spraying rain like knives. Naruto looked after them for a moment, unease building inside him.

He ran after them into the churning forest.

...

* * *

...

"SENSEEEII!" Sakura's piercing shriek was so loud in his ears he imagined he could hear her lungs bursting within her chest. A rush of numb horror juddered through his body at the sound. Kakashi stumbled sideways into a tree, scraping his knuckles raw against the wet bark.

"Sakura!" Kakashi yelled hoarsely, his legs nearly buckling with the horror that swept through him. He shoved himself back to his feet and took off again, splashing through the undergrowth. Rain whirled around him and mud rose in waves about his feet, stinging and cold. Low-hanging vines and brambles tore at his clothes.

Naruto's rough voice joined in then, wordless howls of pure animal agony intermingling with Sakura's shrieks to form a grotesque chorus. A stunted cry spilled out of Kakashi's chest, every reverberation of Naruto's pain-drenched voice rattling his core.

"I'm coming! I'm-" his words choked off, tangling in his throat. The copy-ninja shook his head, silver hair flying, and tore quickly through the underbrush. How had this happened? The very idea that something in the world existed that could draw those noises from his team was incomprehensible. He didn't-

-A terrible scream, raw and heated and seemingly endless, burned through Kakashi. His ears thrummed with pain at the sound.

_Sai_. Kakashi stumbled, shaking his head. His vision was starting to blur. Naruto, Sakura, Sai. He repeated it breathlessly, their names trembling on his lips beneath his rain-soaked mask.

His sandal suddenly caught on a root and he fell, crashing, into the mud. A large, jutting rock scraped over the wet skin of his uncovered brow but he didn't feel a thing. Their screams tore through him like fire. Horror blared through him, his heartbeats blurring together in his ears. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe around that noise. He-

"-Pup!"

Sharp pain sparked in his hand. Little teeth. They dug in deep and tugged, shaking his entire arm. Footsteps splashed around him.

"Snap out of it!"

A heavy weight knocked against his chest then and he was shoved roughly onto his back. The rain drummed and flowed over his face. The Copy-ninja blinked, struggling to see the world through the flinching lashes of his uncovered eye.

"Kakashi!"

There were slices of smoldering black sky, roiling and seething above him, pressing down through gaps in the crazily tossing leaves. The very curve of the sky seemed to be split, torn open and fractured with glowing blue-white lightning. Kakashi gasped roughly, lying on his back in the mud. The world slowly came into focus.

Bull was glaring down at him, his thick paws on Kakashi's chest. The rest of his dogs fretted about him, their fur matted with rainwater and leaves. Their tongues lolled and they whined anxiously. Pakkun bit his hand again.

"What in Kami's name are you doing?!" The little dog spat.

Kakashi swallowed, the clamor of his teammate's yells still clanging in his ears. He pushed himself up on his uninjured elbow.

"-when you're injured." Pakkun was saying, "What exactly are you playing at?"

The Copy-ninja shook his head groggily. He could still hear them. Screaming. He was wasting time. He jerked to his feet, swaying unsteadily.

"Pakkun, I don't-" he choked, "Can't you hear that? They're hurting Naruto, Sakura, and Sai. We have to find them." The words came out mumbled, dazed. Kakashi shook his head, his bangs flopping wetly over his headband.

"We need to split up." He said, "Bull and Urushi, you're..." he gasped, "-with me. Pakkun, you're leading Uhei and Bisuke. Cover the left flank. Akino, you'll lead Shiba and Guruko on the right. I'll come in first and then, when the enemy is distracted, you come in hard from the sides."

The dogs stepped anxiously in the mud for a moment, unwilling to leave their master. Kakashi snapped.

"MOVE!"

A rush of shaggy coats, clumped and heavy with mud, swirled frantically around him. And then they were bounding off, Bull and Urushi stepping forward to stand at his side. Their tails wagged eagerly.

Kakashi clambered onto Bull's back. It wouldn't make sense for him to use any more chakra, he couldn't afford to lose his mind in memories now. And riding Bull was sure to get him to his teammates faster. Kakashi curled his shaking fingers weakly into Bull's thick fur, ignoring the burning ache as his broken fingers moved. He'd wasted enough time.

His teammates' agonized screams pounded against his eardrums. Kakashi squeezed his eyes closed and breathed hard. He was shaking. But he could do this. He had to do this...

A lone stormy grey eye, dark with fury and wilder than any sane man's, snapped open in the falling darkness. The Copy-ninja leaned forwards, laying low over Bull's back, positioning himself for speed.

Whoever was causing those unearthly sounds to come from his teammates... they were now minutes away from their deathbed.

"Let's move."

They took off into the whirling darkness.

...

* * *

...

"This had better work!" Izanami snapped, swiping a hand at her dripping makeup ineffectually, "I've invested more time and effort into getting him than I have for any of the others. Not to mention a week's worth of outfits; ruined."

The men around her glanced at each other uneasily, shifting their muddy feet as they kept their post above the streambed. Even though she was but a stepping stone in Hijame's plans, she had quickly proven herself to be not only more intimidating, but vastly more inconsolable than any woman the rogue-ninja had ever seen.

"My lady," one of the upper-levels grinned, the white band around his arm shining in the fading light as he stepped forward, "You should have more faith... " he grasped her hand elegantly, bowing to kiss it under the drumming rain, "We are here but to serve you."

She stared down at his dark eyes gleaming wickedly up at her and felt a shudder of revulsion. One of his eyebrows was pitted and streaked with a ropy, pink scar. She slid her hand from his blunt, rain-slicked fingers.

"What is your name?" She sniffed, glancing at the man's broad-shouldered, rugged appearance.

"Naoki," he dipped his head, revealing an expansive lacework of scars across the glistening skin of his bald head, "It means honest... Straight as a tree." A golden cap gleamed mockingly from among his row of yellowed teeth.

Izanami turned away from him then. Pretending not to be flustered, she loftily scanned the sodden foliage, her eyes tracing over the slick, wet bark of the trees. None of them looked particularly straight.

...

* * *

...

"Why did you stop?"

"I-it's a stream bed." The boy stammered, his hands fiddling in front of his chest, "If... If you go-"

"-Why." Sakura snarled, "Did. You. Stop." The rogue-ninja flinched, and a gust of chilly air blew in through the swaying trees behind him, lifting his auburn strands. His eyes were wide. He looked like a lost little kid, standing there with his lip trembling in the rain. For some reason this only angered Sakura more. Her eyes narrowed.

"It's just-just down that way," he started again, "They've set up on both sides a-and-"

"-Did we stay stop?"

"I-"

"-No. We didn't." A heady fear and worry for Kakashi-sensei had begun to swell within her as she spoke. It made her feel panicked and rushed. She glared at the boy and said,"If you don't start running again in the next five seconds, we are going to make you run. I know things have seemed pretty peachy for you so far, us sparing your life and healing your skinny, little tooth-pick arms, but believe me, if you stand in our way of saving Kakashi-sensei one more time I'm going to-"

"-Sakura, stop it." Naruto interrupted her, "Just stop, okay." Sakura reeled back a step, shocked that Naruto would interrupt her. He sounded tired and exasperated. Her face grew hot.

"Naruto." she growled, "We don't have time for this. We have to get to Kakashi. Now!"

The Jinchuriki said nothing, but a dark shadow had begun to pass over his blue eyes as he stared at her. Sakura's heart seemed to flip in her chest, all of the barely-contained fear and guilt over Kakashi coming to the surface under the Jinchuriki's flat gaze. _Does he blame me for this?_ Her green eyes stung with tears at the thought. She struggled to regain control.

"What are you doing!?" she struggled to recover, yelling, "Every second we spend here is another second closer to losing Kakashi-sensei! We can't just let him stop! He's wasting our time and he's-"

"-Scared." The Jinchuriki said slowly, his gaze imploring as he moved to stand firmly between her and their captive, "He's scared, Sakura. Can't you see that?" Naruto's bright blue eyes were icy, two pinpricks of effervescent blue flame piercing her through the stinging rain and darkness. Sakura faltered for a moment, panting.

"Well, what does it matter if he's scared!" she yelled, and her own voice sounded shrill to her ears, "I don't _give _a damn! We need to get to sensei!" But Naruto just shook his head, a saddened expression crossing over his face as he looked down at the muddy ground between them.

"Sakura... do you even know who you sound like?" The team's medic froze, a sensation like ice expanding in her veins spreading through her at his words. _Sasuke_...

Sakura turned away from him, jerking around to face the dark, empty forest. She squeezed her eyes closed, a heated throb building in her chest. _No. Don't think about that-Don't think about him... Keep it together,_ she berated herself. Naruto spoke slowly from behind her, his voice soft in the falling rain.

"This isn't how Kaka-sensei would want us to do things." he paused, and then he said, "He wouldn't want us to lose who we are, Sakura-chan."

Sakura turned around slowly. She stared at him.

And it was then that she became aware of a cold emptiness growing within her, something dark and determined seeping into the spaces previously occupied by fear and uncertainty. How long this had been building up inside of her she didn't know, but finally, as she stood steadily under the pounding rain... she knew that it had taken hold of her completely. And that she was stronger for believing in it.

Sai's dark eyes glanced quickly between Naruto and her, finally recognizing the tense, strangled silence between them. The beginnings of a rift.

Sakura stepped slowly up to Naruto. Her hands were shaking. The Jinchuriki's spine stiffened and his blue eyes flickered up to meet hers, as if he already knew her thoughts. They stared at each other, the firmness of an invisible wall forming between them, and Sakura's hands curled into fists. Thick sheets of icy rain whirled around them, battering their forms, sending their hair whipping across their stony faces. Sakura leaned closer to her teammate, turning her face so she could whisper into his ear.

"We've already lost Sasuke..." Naruto's eyes snapped open wide at her words, shining with hurt, "We've lost him and it might take more than any of us have to ever get him back. So, don't you dare... Don't you _dare_, Naruto, get in the way of us saving Kakashi-sensei."

She leaned back then, and her face felt immeasurably hard and cold against the stinging wind. Her green eyes flitted over to where the rogue-ninja stood, watching their interaction tremulously beneath the flooding rain. Her eyes narrowed to slits.

"Sakura, you know I would do _anything_ to have our whole team back..." Naruto's voice came out soft, broken. She turned to stare at him, her expression icy.

"There's _nothing _I wouldn't do."

...

* * *

...

Small paws splashed through the slowly rising mud, leaping over tree roots and low-rising bushes. Uhei, Bisuke, and Pakkun scrabbled through the underbrush, Pakkun in the lead. A long-lasting boom of thunder exploded through the sky, making the very trunks of the trees shudder with it's raw, unbridled power. Rain spattered over them and hung heavily in their coats. Uhei whined anxiously.

"I didn't hear anything earlier, when he asked if we could 'hear that'. I didn't hear anything."

Pakkun frowned at Uhei, the wrinkles deepening on his fuzzy face. A twinge of unease traveled through him.

"I didn't hear anything either." he admitted, "But we have orders. We'll do whatever Kakashi asks of us." Bisuke yapped in sharp agreement. They continued on their path through the forest, speeding through the gnarled foliage and sweeping rain.

...

* * *

...

"... You don't mean that." Naruto mumbled, staring at Sakura in shock.

"You don't." He rocked back on his feet, stumbling into a tree. She didn't mean that. She was just feeling stressed and anxious like the rest of them, right? This wasn't how Sakura normally acted. There was no way she had been hording up all of these feelings this whole time. Like Sasuke had...

The pink-haired girl stepped back from her teammate. She raised her hand to her forehead, looking down at the ground. Her face was pale and dull. A heated wave of concern rushed through Naruto at the sight of her, and it was all he could do to refrain from moving towards her. She scrubbed roughly at her eyes with the heel of her palm, pink bangs hanging limply over her face. Her shoulders looked thin and fragile under the pounding rain. The Jinchuriki took a halted step forwards. His arms ached to hold her.

"Sakura, what's going on?" he said, his voice coming out quiet and hurt, "It's... you're not thinking this is all your fault are you?" Her shoulders hiked up in a shuddering sob, but she caught the sound in the falling darkness, her hand flying over her mouth. Naruto stepped towards her.

"It's not." he said, "Sakura, it's not your-"

"-Naruto!" her voice cracked and the barely-contained pain in her voice stopped his feet in their tracks. Yori and Sai looked at the both of them, helpless to do anything but watch. The rain swelled over them all, mud sloshing up to their calves in waves.

"Sakura," he tried again, "I-"

-Three shapes burst out from the trees beside them, charging right into the middle of their group. The shinobi reacted furiously in the darkness, a bout of shurikan swinging down towards the intruders as Sakura and Sai leaped reflexively back into the trees. A sudden tumult of snarls and splashing footsteps erupted at the sudden attack. Naruto, kunai in hand, sprinted towards the huddled figures.

Lightning split the darkness.

"Pakkun!" Naruto had just enough time to yelp before something tackled him hard from the side, sending him rolling into a puddle. He quickly scrambled to his feet and saw that Uhei, another of Kakashi's ninken had headbutted him. The dog shifted from paw to paw anxiously as soon as their eyes met.

"What's going on?!" the dog whined in what could only be alarm, "Kakashi said that you guys were being hurt!" Bisuke, another of Kakashi's ninken trotted over to join Uhei. He growled, clearly confused. Pakkun dropped a kunai that he'd caught with his mouth and frowned, his brown eyes shifting over everyone there.

"Who's that guy?" he barked, trotting forwards to sniff at the rogue-ninja's feet. The boy's face paled.

"These dogs are talking." he said informatively.

"I've seen stranger things." the pug quipped, raising a wrinkled brow at the rogue-ninja dubiously.

"Hold on, hold on." Sakura interrupted them, "What are you guys doing here? Kakashi-sensei can't use chakra."

The three dogs shared an uncomfortable look. Thunder rumbled overhead.

"He summoned us to go rescue you guys." Bisuke growled, clearly off-put with their predicament, "Split us into three groups and gave us orders to attack your captors."

"Then what-" Naruto started, but Sai cut him off before he could ask anything.

"I should think the answer is obvious. This must be the long-distance henge being cast by one of Hijame's upper-levels. Already it is being used to draw Kakashi-taichou in."

"Hijame? A long-distance henge?" Pakkun snapped, his wrinkled brow furrowing, "What is this nonsense?"

Sakura opened her mouth to speak but Naruto answered for her.

"Oh, a long-distance henge is a henge that can work at a long distance." he explained knowledgeably, "And its made possible, it works, uh, uh because of... germs."

Everyone in the clearing possessing hands smacked themselves on the forehead.

...

* * *

...

Wind howled in his ears, tearing at his clothes and hair as Kakashi bounded through the forest on Bull's back. Mud rose up around him sudden walls of murky water as Bull's heavy paws splashed through the undergrowth. Each step sent an agonizing jolt ringing through his body, and Kakashi was forced to bite his lip beneath his mask to keep from making noise. They were getting closer.

The raspiness of Bull's heavy breathing filled his ears, sounding feral and excited. It sent a wild thrum of adrenaline buzzing through him. In seconds they would be upon them.

...

* * *

...

An unnatural silence seeped over the streambed, filling in the spaces between the hissing rain and booming thunder. A small bird fluttered anxiously from one low-hanging branch to another, hiding itself in the glistening leaves. Hijame's men waited, settling into their positions, all eyes trained upon the direction of the distant waterfall. Expectation hung thickly over the forest.

Hijame's steely gaze narrowed.

And then the tense silence was broken, shattered into a million barbed fragments that split the very air. The Copy-ninja blasted into the ditch, riding low atop an enormous, bristling dog. Two other canines launched themselves into the air after him, and they all landed with a stinging spray of water in the shallow stream, snarling. Hijame raised his brows, a grin spreading over his face.

"Why Kakashi," he began, "it's-"

-The razor-sharp edge of a shurikan ghosted by his face, a fiery streak of pain bursting along his temple. Hijame's eyes widened, Kakashi's own solitary grey orb catching him in it's icy stare. He saw the Copy-ninja's fingers twitch out of the corner of his eye.

The rogue-ninja leader reacted instinctively.

Swinging his head forwards and to the side in a sharp duck, Hijame dived forward into the gurgling stream. But he could not fully escape the spiraling blade that came swinging out from where his men were stationed behind him. He landed with a crash on his hands and knees, scraping them over the slippery rocks in the stream. White hot pain erupted over his back and shoulder as the blade struck him, burrowing deeply into his flesh. Hijame growled, still holding the Copy-ninja's frigid gaze. Chakra wires twitched in the shinobi's half-gloved fingers. He growled.

"You have something of mine."

...

* * *

...

_Hey everyone, _

_I know it's been a while and I'm sorry about that. I'll do my best to keep updating all of my stories. Thank you if you are still taking the time to read this. Also, I am fully aware that I said Yori was wearing boots in the last chapter and now for some reason he is barefoot. You're right, this is a mistake and it should be fixed. And maybe it will be. If I ever do finish this story I will be sure to go back over all of your reviews and make the suggested changes. If anyone is displeased or upset with this chapter I understand and it's up to you whether you want to keep reading or not. Like I said, all complaints will be noted and I will do my best to fix my mistakes when I have the time._

_Thanks,_

_~Flinty_


	23. Chapter 23

_..._

**NOSTALGIA**

_..._

Hijame rose to his feet with a disquieting steadiness, a portrait of inhuman composure in the midst of the wind and water snapping around him. He reached calmly over his shoulder and slid the blade from the meaty hunk of his back, his slanted eyes lit in an expression of intrigue rather than pain. The men surrounding him all seemed to stiffen, the old man holding the genjutsu beside him wincing at the slick sound of parting flesh. Hijame tossed the blade thoughtfully in his hand, as if it were not red with his blood and hadn't just been buried within his own body. His eyes were fastened upon the figure of the Copy-ninja, crouched low and still atop the back of an enormous dog.

"Where are they?" The Copy-ninja's voice echoed flatly over the flooding streambed. Hijame laughed.

Kakashi cocked his head to the side. A sudden, animal gesture. His grey eye was blank of reason.

"I wish you would mix things up a little, Kakashi." Hijame said cooly, "You make it easy for us."

The Copy-ninja did not move, did not appear to be breathing beneath the pounding onslaught of rain.

"You're predictable." the rogue-nin leader began, his eyes narrowing, "Weakened, emaciated, hardly able to stand. You can't even use the slightest bit of chakra without falling headfirst into the bloody pit of memories stored in your sharingan... And yet here you are."

Kakashi stiffened. Hijame regarded him with the steady, contemptuous look of one who has dropped all false pretense and now wishes everyone to know that he's held the winning cards all along.

"No need to look so surprised, Kakashi. You knew I was a master of poisons." Hijame said pleasantly, "Is it really so shocking that the vapor I had Makoto breathe into you, shortly before you killed him, poisoned your _chakra_? Sure, you were able to regulate it-I'm guessing it was your feisty little medic who thought to blast your chakra coils?-But, that didn't really solve everything, did it?... No," Hijame's dark eyes flicked over the Copy-ninja smugly, "I didn't think so."

He grinned.

"Should I spell it out for you?" Hijame chuckled, "You're. Still. _Poisoned_. That hungry little kekkai genkai of yours? The one you probably scooped out of a friend's dead body, his blood still fresh on your hands? Well it sucked up and stored some of that poisoned chakra before your pink-haired little friend had a chance to flush it out... And it's still in there. Like a rotting tooth... Festering."

A small frown had begun to harden over the Copy-ninja's brow. Hijame continued, fully laughing now.

"Had any nightmares lately, Kakashi-kun? Dizzy spells?... Hallucinations." His smile darkened, "Bet you'd give anything to make them stop, wouldn't you? Well, you can. You have a couple options." Hijame cast a conspiring glance at his men positioned around him, smirking, "Never use chakra again. Give up now, and come with us quietly... Or you can take matters into your own hands and tear that cursed sharingan out of your skull with the jagged blade of that kunai you've got there."

The Copy-ninja snarled.

"You still haven't answered my question... _Where_. _Are_. _They_."

Hijame smirked and said nothing. Rain slashed down over their figures, the wind howling through the rocking branches of the trees.

Kakashi sprang from Bull's back, kunai in hand, shattered arm hanging loosely behind him, and leaped at Hajime. The screams of his friends rang in his ears.

"_SEN-_

* * *

"-SENSAI NO!"

Sakura's raw voice burst from her throat and the desperate, ragged sound of it echoed out through the clearing. Chakra whizzed through her, every muscle of her body was moving, straining, rushing to get there in time. Leaves and water seemed almost to be standing still as she flew through the forest with the rest of her team, the rogue-nin, and Kakashi's ninken.

But it was too late.

She could only watch as the Copy-ninja sped through the air. His hard, lithe frame cut through the howling wind and rain, his grey eye flashing with cool fire, glinting kunai raised before him, ready to strike-And Hajime met him with a tremendous kick to the chest.

Kakashi was flung to the ground, a great wave of muddy water climbing up to kiss the falling droplets of rain before splashing down over him. There was a series of thin, snapping sounds and suddenly the fallen shinobi was tangled in the long, coiled grip of several transparent whips. The Copy-ninja hissed, a terrible noise of animal frustration slipping out of him as he jerked and twisted, the icy mud-water of the flooding streambed rushing over him in waves. Thunder boomed darkly overhead.

"N-" Sakura's scream was drowned out by the ferocity of the roar that erupted from Naruto. He charged through the forest at her side, his whiskered face contorted into a devilish mask of rage.

There was a growing rumble of pounding feet, splashing through the undergrowth on the other side of the clearing, blood-freezing howls and snarls cutting through the lashing wind and rain. The chilling savagery of it sent a low quake of fear echoing through Sakura's heart.

Bull and Urushi, bristling at the sight of their master trapped in the mud, sprang forwards at the same moment Akino, Shiba, and Guruko burst from the shadowed treeline on the opposite side of the streambed. A scattering of leaves, dark with water, blustered in the air behind them in their wake.

The rogue-nin positioned around the clearing sprang into action.

Kunai whizzed and flew through the sheets of icy rain, rough grunts and yells clamoring above the shrieking wind. Sakura narrowed her eyes, straining forwards with every ounce of her being.

Have to... save him. We have to... Have to-

And then Kakashi was screaming. The taut, transparent length of the whips, coiled and tangled over the Copy-ninja's body, lit up like blue fire. It burned with a hellish glow in the descending darkness, an explosive flare of such magnitude that Sakura was blinded. Her foot caught in the twisted skeleton of a low-crouching bush. She slammed to the ground, the breath in her lungs punched out of her body with the force of her fall. Naruto, Sai, and the rogue-nin stumbled and crashed to the mud beside her, Kakashi's ninken slipping to the forest floor with a chorus of startled yelps.

Ragged snarls and howls peppered the looming night. The low, heated cries of men, clouded with blood-lust, rose to meet them; the high, keening yowl of the wind, icy droplets of rain snapping to and fro, layering over the metallic sounds of battle. A booming grumble of laughter coalesced with a tremendous roll of thunder, a sound so deep and full it seemed as though the very heavens had ruptured.

And still, above all the noise and clamor, Kakashi _screamed_.

Sakura struggled to her feat, weaving. Shadows and jagged flashes of color danced and swiveled across her vision, everything overcast with an electric, pulsing, manic blue.

"Sensai... Sen-"

She stumbled over a jutting root and fell. Pushed herself back up, feet tottering precariously beneath her. She bumped into someone. A flash of charred orange. Her heart pounded in her ears, drawing out every other sound.

Except for that screaming. That awful, raw-throated screaming. She couldn't, she-

Something rammed her from the side, sending her and the person she'd bumped into sprawling to the forest floor. It held them both down, unrelenting. An endless stream of icy water drummed into her skull, slipping and sliding over her face, swelling the frothy mud growing below her.

Her heart thumped once, twice more loudly in her ears, her body slipping away from her.

And then the unfeeling, heavy hand of darkness closed over her.

...

* * *

_..._

_"But, d__addy, that doesn't make any sense."_

_Five year old Kakashi tottered after his father, an overflowing water pitcher clutched tightly to his chest. Water sloshed and dribbled over his hands, lapping down the front of his shirt as he marched deeper into the garden. With every step it felt like he was journeying closer and closer to the heart of a vibrant, pulsing green cocoon. Rubbery, thick-fringed fronds waved far above his head in what seemed like a constant breath of wind. Thin, buttery beams of sunlight danced a mindless waltz over the rich, dark soil beneath his feet._

_"Why didn't he just stop?" Kakashi's fine brows knit together in a befuddled frown, "You said he already stole enough to be emperor."_

_A low-creeping vine snagged on his sandal, tripping him. Sakumo steadied him with a heavy palm on his shoulder before he could fall._

_"Here, hold it like this." The White Fang adjusted the boy's grip into something resembling a death-choke. He ran a callused palm over Kakashi's hair, mussing the white locks down to the root. Kakashi leaned into the touch, reveling in the grainy roughness of his father's hand. Sakumo walked on a few steps._

_"And it's 'Enough to live like an emperor', not 'be emperor'." He explained, slipping into a lecturing tone without seeming to be aware of it. Sakumo's dark eyes looked dark and very far away as he drifted quietly through the swaying leaves. Kakashi stomped after him, annoyed to have the answer to his question swapped for a lesson in grammar._

_"But why!" he huffed, "Why did he sign up for another h... highest if he knew the daimyo asked you guys to stop him?"_

_"Heist." Sakumo corrected absently, "You mean heist. And, I suppose... he... felt responsible."_

_Saying Sakumo's loose stride hinged to a stop abruptly. The White Fang lifted his hand to a spiky cluster of leaves, his movements sluggish as if in a daze. He ran the slick, blade-like frond between his thumb and forefinger slowly. His eyes were weary and hooded._

_This answer didn't make any sense to Kakashi. He shifted on his tiny sandaled feet, a cloud of uncertainty settling over him as he looked up at his father. It made him nervous when his daddy got this way._

_"What?" his small voice piped, "What's that mean?"_

_It was a long moment before he was given an answer. Kakashi shuffled his feet, reverting to hugging the water pitcher again. He stared up at his dad with wide, grey eyes._

_"Responsibility..." Sakumo murmured suddenly, his flat voice making the little boy jump, "It's the force that drives you when you have every reason not to do something."_

_It occurred to Kakashi that his father may not have been talking about one of his old missions anymore._

_The little boy swallowed, blinking hard. Ever since that mission a month ago where the White Fang had come home, his feet dragging but with no visible sign of injury, things had been... different. Everybody in the streets glared at them now, and his father spoke little, smiled even less. Kakashi felt nervous all the time but he couldn't say why. He thought about reaching for his father's hand, but suddenly he felt scared to._

_Sakumo turned his head to look at him. His eyes were shadowed and empty. A chilly wind licked through the leaves, raising the fine white hairs in a halo around the White Fang's pale face._

_In that moment Kakashi felt that he didn't know the man at all._

_"He had a responsibility to take care of the people he loves. No matter the consequences or what it would cost him..."_

_Sakumo said the words tonelessly, his dark eyes boring into Kakashi's._

_"He has a responsibility..." Sakumo whispered, the words falling like a slow mantra from his lips, "To the people... he loves. He's just got to..."_

_A lone, unchecked tear slipped down Sakumo's cheek. Kakashi stared up at him, horrified._

_"keep... going."_

_The water pitcher slipped through Kakashi's hands suddenly, as if they'd somehow forgot how to work. It landed on the ground with an enormous-_

-**SPLASH!**

Water, stinging and cold, fell on him like a slap in the face. Kakashi jolted into consciousness with a choked, guttural noise. His body thrashed in shock and he lurched forwards but was stopped before he could sit up. Pain juddered through the back of his skull as he was forced to crash back into a lying-down position. Confusion and alarm whirled through him.

Instinctively, frantically, his mind scrambled for details.

_Wrists and ankles pinned. Metal. No chakra-blocking cuffs. Blind-folded. Less pain, significantly less. Have I been healed? Why_-

"-Oof!"

All of the air was punched out of him as a second wave of icy water came crashing down. Kakashi jolted, whipping his head like a dog, an animal growl slipping from his gritted teeth unbidden. The flat metal surface beneath him rattled, the sound echoing loudly off walls that seemed to crouch over him in the darkness. Kakashi forced himself to stiffen, his muscles bunched and seizing with adrenaline. His own breath sounded ragged and harsh in his ears.

If he focused his hearing he could just make out the ghostly huff of accelerated breathing just above him.

A fine blade of panic twisted in his stomach. He wasn't alone...

-Thick fingers yanked his mask down suddenly.

"Rahh!" A fierce yell of anger burst out of Kakashi suddenly, catching himself by surprise. It echoed eerily off the too-close sounding walls, layering over itself, warping his cry into something that no longer sounded human. His entire body thrashed, clanging against the icy metal beneath him, and an icy fury filled him. Cool air swooped in and stung his face as two sets of hands pinned his shoulders and knees down, splaying him out flat in the darkness. Kakashi grunted. Low chuckles sounded around him.

_Focus!_ The Copy-Nin reprimanded himself, heart pounding, _How many are there? What do they-_

-His jaw was suddenly crushed in bone-breaking grip. Pain splintered through him, glowing orbs of red popping before his blind-folded eyes. Heat flowed into his bare face, sudden and intense.

"How many men can say they've seen the face of the great Copy-Ninja and lived to tell the tale?" a dark voice rumbled above him.

Kakashi ceased his thrashing. A furious snarl began to twitch on his upper lip. The grip on his jaw grew tighter.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you..." a second, more breathless voice whispered over him.

Kakashi's finely tuned ears picked up on the thin vein of fear in the second voice. Almost instinctively, the Copy-Ninja relaxed and let his snarl melt away, a cool, calculating blankness slipping over his naked face instead. This seemed to amuse the man bruising his jaw in his hand. He chuckled.

"See? Not so scary, is he?"

The second, higher voice let out an uneasy moan. The sound of feet shuffling on stone echoed through the cramped chamber.

"Stop... Don't make him angry, please."

There was a beat of silence where Kakashi could feel the owner of the man crushing his face staring at the second man.

"Remind me again why Hijame wanted you here?"

There was a quiet sound like chalk breaking as the second man swallowed.

"Because my entire family was killed by the Copy-Ninja."

Kakashi kept his face studiously blank, refusing to show his alarm at hearing this. He'd killed a man's entire family?

The first man said nothing. The second continued, his voice growing even quieter.

"Hijame wanted me here because you don't see what I do..."

A loud snort filled the room.

"And what exactly is it that I'm not seeing? Pray, tell me." The first man growled, his rough voice darkening.

Kakashi let a quiet, joyless smile spread slowly over his face. The hand squeezing his face released him, pulling back as if burnt. The men above him gasped.

The Copy-Ninja spoke, and his low, even voice resounded soullessly off the stone chamber walls.

"What you're not seeing is that, this whole time that you've been talking, I've already come up with thirty-eight possible scenarios that end with both of you bleeding out on the floor."

The two men stepped back without seeming to realize it. Kakashi could nearly feel the frightened pulse of their hearts humming against his skin. Eventually the first man stepped forwards, this time catching the Copy-Ninja's thick mane of white hair in his meaty fist.

Kakashi grinned, showing teeth.

"Thirty-nine."

...

* * *

...

_I would like to make a public expression of thanks. _

_This fanfiction is in fact my very first attempt at writing. For those of you who have stuck by me and found the time in your days to keep updated with this story, you couldn't have given me a better gift. I've learned so much from the beautiful souls on this site, and largely within the Naruto Fanbase. You all are some of the most fearlessly imaginative people I've ever had the pleasure of interacting with. _

_There have been times, long starving stretches of time in fact, where I've given up on Nostalgia completely... And I cannot honestly promise that those times won't ever fall upon me again. And yet something keeps drawing me back._

_For a long while now, I've been trying to determine what exactly it is that keeps pulling me back to Nostalgia. And I think I've finally found out what it is._

_You._

_Yes, you. If you are reading this right now, you have trudged through 23 chapters and roughly 3 years of bumbling mistakes and convoluted plot-twists. And you have no idea what that's done for me._

_Aside from all of the ups and downs of life, and believe me there were many, a large part of the reason I've been neglecting my fanfiction is because I've started writing my own book. Never in a million years would I have ever had the knowledge, experience, or even the aspiration to begin such a feat if it weren't for you dear reader. Who's to say how it will all turn out, but no matter the result, you all have given me such support and encouragement that it's moved me to tears on more occasions than I would like to admit. _

_You've given me something invaluable: Hope._

_So thank you, thank you for all of the views, all of the reviews, the criticism and the praise. It means a lot to me, as you can probably judge by the length of this aside, and I want to repay you very much in the only way I know how. To keep trying, to keep moving forward. This isn't a promise that I will finish Nostalgia, this is a declaration of my desire to do so. Because you all have given me so much and the least I could do is give you closure. It'll be a slow and possibly very disappointing process, but a process it shall be._

_Special thanks should be made to:_

_the goliath beetle, a neverending dream of flight, telyra, , ranowa hikura, and special, special thanks to prescripto13 and the you of yesterday._

_Thank you all so much,_

_~Flinty_


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